Originally Posted by ashill

There is an advantage in convenience, accuracy, and accessibility to typing rather than using the phone. I agree that tying in to a specific, third party, proprietary platform is less than ideal. There's no reason they couldn't host a functionally-identical chat-based support service on their own web site and through their own app, and they could also tie it into other platforms like iMessage and WhatsApp, not to mention old-fashioned SMS (although the lack of delivery confirmation is a bit of an issue there; I find SMS to be a bit less reliable and, most importantly, I often don't know when an SMS has failed to go through).