Email vs. Chat Support: You Probably Don't Need Live Chat

## The Live Chat Industrial Complex

Every support platform wants to sell you live chat. Intercom, Zendesk, Freshdesk, Drift, all of them push the chat widget as essential infrastructure. They show stats about conversion rates and customer preference and response time expectations.

Here's what they don't tell you: live chat is a staffing commitment, and if you can't staff it properly, it's worse than not having it.

A chat widget that says "We typically reply in a few hours" is just email with ...