Why there is no technical support by phone in data recovery

Once in a while people demand that we provide technical support not only by e-mails, but by phone as well. Despite the apparent reasonableness of the request, it is not that simple in practice.

A typical case of technical data recovery support via email looks like the following:

1.  A client contacts our technical support and describes his or her problem for the first time.
2.  We send a reply where we ask the questions to clarify obscure points. Usually we have three to five questions (although there may be more) which are organized as a numbered list.
3. In the following email a client answers the questions. There are cases when client needs time to think or do some simple checks to answer the questions.
4. In response to the message from a client, we send a list of recommended actions or step-by-step instructions as to what he or she should do next. There are cases when boilerplate instructions fit just right; however, almost half of all cases require pondering on our side to adapt typical data recovery instructions to a particular case or to create new ones. It takes about ten minutes or so unless we need to do some long tests.

As you can see, the scheme above doesn't fit into the time frame of a typical phone call. Additionally, email support gives a written plan of actions and a well-structured trace of activity one can consult any time. It's just something that phone support lacks. The conclusion is that it is just not practical to provide any serious support in data recovery (and perhaps in any other technical industry) by phone. Let's stick to emails.