Instrumenting support mechanisms

As you learned in Chapter 6, Support Models for API Products, support is a crucial aspect of customer experience. Making sure customers can find support channels when they need them can take many forms across various components of the API experience.

Live chat support is a great way to let customers reach out for help as they go through the products and evaluate them, but this can often be resource intensive. Products such as Intercom have innovated significantly in creating messaging experiences that find the balance between resource-intensive support and self-help for customers.

Oftentimes, developers will have questions about your APIs that are not clearly addressed in the documentation, or if they run into complicated scenarios during the integration process, they might need support. Tools such as Zendesk enable you to build support flows while allowing customers to choose their preferred channel of communication.

Direct support channels...