Email sucks, sure. But it sucks less than any of these alternatives:
- Corporate support chats (no way to export/capture a papertrail as a customer, usually horribly brittle)
- Proprietary/company-specific messaging solutions in my account on various sites (no notification channel for responses, often no papertrail for me either)
- Contact forms (unidirectional, not standardized, no papertrail for me as a sender)
- Push notifications (single-device only, no reasonable inbox management, headline-only)
- SMS (just no on so many levels, most importantly that I don't want everything to be tied to my phone/phone plan and that I can't own my phone number in the same way that I can own a TLD)
The EU (or Germany, I still haven't found out) mandates companies to have a support email address, and it's just so much more pleasant than the US pattern of providing only phone support, a horrible support chat experience, or a mailing address.
- Corporate support chats (no way to export/capture a papertrail as a customer, usually horribly brittle)
- Proprietary/company-specific messaging solutions in my account on various sites (no notification channel for responses, often no papertrail for me either)
- Contact forms (unidirectional, not standardized, no papertrail for me as a sender)
- Push notifications (single-device only, no reasonable inbox management, headline-only)
- SMS (just no on so many levels, most importantly that I don't want everything to be tied to my phone/phone plan and that I can't own my phone number in the same way that I can own a TLD)
The EU (or Germany, I still haven't found out) mandates companies to have a support email address, and it's just so much more pleasant than the US pattern of providing only phone support, a horrible support chat experience, or a mailing address.