Insights
The customer support field guide
Analysis, data notes, and how-tos across the whole craft — metrics, quality, people, ops, knowledge, tooling, trust, and AI. Key figures link to their sources; no vendor is paying for the verdict.
44dispatches in the archive202612
- Analysis
The transfer rate nobody watches
Handoff rate is the quality-and-cost signal hiding in plain sight: every transfer is a first-contact failure your other metrics were built to forgive, and the customer feels each one.
Jul 24, 20263 min - Analysis
The service-recovery paradox, tested
A well-handled failure is supposed to beat no failure at all. The idea is real — but when researchers looked for it in the wild, it mostly wasn't there. What the evidence says, and where it stops.
Jul 22, 20264 min - Analysis
Concurrency: the hidden cap on chat quality
The three-times-cheaper math behind live chat lives or dies on one dial nobody watches: how many conversations an agent runs at once. Here is what one, two and three concurrent chats actually cost.
Jul 17, 20263 min - Analysis
Escalation authority: who decides what when risk rises
Design escalation around consequence, decision rights, and accepted ownership—not tiers, urgency labels, or forwarded conversations.