Real support is not instant - it’s lasting
My personal unpopular opinion, after more than 10 years in customer support:
There’s almost nothing in the software world that truly requires the urgency of real-time chat. Nearly everything can be handled asynchronously via email.
In fact, chats often end up taking longer. People message customer support the same way they chat with friends: short, fragmented, informal. They don’t provide the context or detail needed to actually solve the issue. I’d go even further and say that chat interfaces aren’t exactly encouraging when it comes to writing a thoughtful, comprehensive message. So instead of solving a problem efficiently, it turns into an endless back-and-forth.
Enter, chatbots.
Chatbots have been around long before the rise of LLMs and AI agents, but the arrival of the latter has only amplified the problem. And now that companies are slapping AI bandages on everything, chat-based support is an obvious target.
They see the inefficiency of chat - and support in general - not as a signal to rethink the medium or invest in better human processes, but as a justification to automate it entirely. If chat is already impersonal and frustrating, why not let a machine handle it? On paper, it’s cheaper, faster, easier.
But instead of solving the problem, it only degrades the experience further - for the customer, not the company.
In the rush to optimize the burn rate of VC money and ride the AI wave, companies are hiding behind AI support like it’s a silver bullet - and their customers are vampires. It’s incredibly frustrating to get an auto-reply from a system that doesn’t even try to understand the nuance of your request. It just scans for keywords and spits out something that might vaguely match.
I’m not saying human support is perfect - far from it. But there’s a difference when a real person takes the time to read and understand your message. There’s something human in that. And that something is what’s missing when you’re stuck in a loop with an AI chatbot.
To me, ping-pong is the perfect analogy here: the game is engaging when you’re playing with another human - not when you’re batting the ball against a wall designed to do one thing: return your serve. Or, more accurately, a wall that was never designed for the game at all.
And while companies double down on AI and autonomous agents, something else is happening in parallel: users are quietly opting out.
They’re not waiting for AI support chatbots to evolve - after all, they already have ChatGPT. Instead, they’re heading to Reddit - or retreating into the walled gardens of Discord and Slack - seeking answers, advice, and a sense of community from real humans.
And I genuinely believe that chat apps are not designed for that. While Discord and Slack offer community, they’re also fleeting by design. Messages disappear into the scroll, and good answers get buried in the side threads. It’s like a never-ending group chat - great for real-time energy, but terrible for knowledge that needs to stick around.
That’s why forums still matter.
Forums and comments create structure. They’re searchable, linkable, and persistent. A thoughtful post from three years ago can still help someone today. A conversation can grow over time. And when people contribute there, they’re not just answering a question - they’re building something others can return to.
“Clair Obscure: Expedition 33,” an absolutely fantastic game I finished recently, gets it:
“For those who come after…”
Take any software subreddit, for example. Sure, you’ll find the usual complaints when something breaks - but you’ll also see thread after thread of real people asking real questions:
“How do you do this?” “What’s in your Raycast?” “What plugins do you use in Obsidian?” “How do you do that?” “What areas and projects do you use in Things?”"Do you study with Bear? etc. etc.
These aren’t bug reports. They’re conversations - organic, messy, human. They reflect how people actually use software. Not just how it’s supposed to work, like on some static support page, but how it fits into their workflow, their habits, their thought process. That’s why I believe that community is the future of support.
It’s not just about solving problems - it’s about sharing context. And that fits neatly with the rise of software as a lifestyle brand:
…people don’t just use these apps. they use them to imagine themselves differently. more organized. more intentional. more in control. apps like superhuman or linear aren’t just tools, they’re lifestyle upgrades. software that feels like a reward. a signal that you care about your time, your taste.
When software becomes part of how we see ourselves, we don’t just want instructions - we want reflections. Stories. A sense that someone else has walked this path and can show us something we wouldn’t have figured out on our own.
That’s the kind of support people are really looking for: not a FAQ, not an AI chatbot, but another person who’s been there and figured something out. A person who can share their experience of using something.
And no AI will ever be able to do that.