[gxs]

Some of the most successful companies in the world, with a reputation for excellent customer service offer single channel support through cases only, because phone support is too inefficient.

Kudos to you for staying afloat for so long the way you did.

[cyberferret]

Thanks. I did try to coerce my customers away from phone support (by reducing my hours that I would respond to calls) and try to get them to use a ticketing system (Zendesk)). That worked to a certain extent, but still didn't fully eliminate those that were already used to phone support.

A ticketing system also helped with another big bugbear of mine - getting back to customers with long support ticket cycles, i.e. where I had to make bug fixes, test and deploy. I was frequently forgetting to get back to them to advise them I had fixed an issue. The ticketing system helped me to keep track of that.

Following up with customers was another mind loop that detracted from the freedom of mind I needed to develop good code.

[friendzis]

At my last gig we had three support channels: phone, skype and ticketing. Standard workflow (which clients always tried to circumvent) was: client writes to skype/calls, we decide whether complaint is solved by a quick explanation and respond with a call, or problem requires more investigation/work and client is directed to submit a ticket.