a slightly heretical take from someone who runs support: support is a revenue job and almost everyone staffs it like a cost to minimize. i’m the one who talks a frustrated customer out of a chargeback and into staying another month, and that’s worth real money, but most operators treat support as a ticket queue to ignore. how do you all handle it? outsource, automate, do it yourself at 2am? and does anyone else actually measure what good support saves you?
this is a retention lever people ignore because it never shows up as a line item. a saved chargeback isn’t just the refund you didn’t eat, it’s the MID health you protected, and on high risk that’s survival. i measure support by disputes prevented and saves, not tickets closed. the ops outsourcing to the cheapest queue are optimizing the wrong number.
a support contact that actually answers is the cheapest chargeback prevention there is. most disputes are just a confused or annoyed customer who couldn’t reach anyone. put a human in front of them fast and a big chunk of those turn into a refund or a calmer customer instead of a dispute.
on a cam site support never sleeps, and a slow reply during a live show is a refund and a lost regular in the same minute. i staffed it properly once i figured that out. real time products punish bad support instantly. cheap support on a live product is a false economy you notice fast.
people staff support like a cost because they never measure what it saves, so it just looks like expense on the sheet. track saves and prevented disputes and it flips. i run a small op and even i answer fast, a happy customer rebills and an ignored one disputes. cheapest retention you’ll ever buy.
Half my job on the model side is basically support, for the models and the customers both, and the stuff that keeps people around never shows up in a ticket count. The metric you pick decides whether support reads as a cost or a save. Pick tickets closed and you’ll cut the thing that’s actually making you money. Stealing this framing.