Charlotte Ward argues that eliminating customer support entirely is a false goal that creates product debt. Most market-facing products are too complex to be fully self-serve, no matter how intuitive the design. Even companies that try to build ultra-intuitive experiences from the start still need support staff.
I think it's the ambition of most engineering and product leaders to do away with support by making the product so self-serve, so intuitive, that you'll never, ever need anyone in the business to talk to a customer again, right? Because the product will just do it all. In that sense, the product is always in debt, I think. Like, you're always playing catch-up. I think it's very, very few products on the market, and I think they're probably not very complex products on the market, that don't need any support at all. I mean, I can think of some very small footprint apps and things like that where it's so intuitive. And we all know there are companies out there who you almost never need to contact support for, you know, like they design from the beginning to like make it as intuitive as possible, but they get it wrong, you know, that's why they need support people.
