Your support portal called. It’s feeling lonely.

Many vendors are reporting significant decreases in traffic to their support portal, even though their customer base is growing (and, presumably, their products have not magically become bug-free and supremely easy to use). What’s going on?

Four Reasons Why Your Support Portal is Used Less

Navigation is replaced by search

Classic support websites rely heavily on navigating to the functionality the user needs, including navigating to the appropriate piece of documentation. AI-powered search is now capable of finding relevant information faster and more accurately, so the elaborate navigation schemes of yore are no longer required.

Search is replaced by third-party LLMs

Savvy users, and most younger users, don’t even bother to visit support portals. They just use their favorite LLM and go with its answer. We call this behavior DIY Support [LINK]. Note that DIY Support cannot access content you’ve chosen to gate, and that it heavily relies on third-party information, which may be dated or inaccurate.

Customers access support via the product

SaaS users can often access support seamlessly from the product, bringing with them their context. As they ask a question, the system already knows who they are, what product they are using, what support entitlements they have, what platform they are on, and even the specific context for their question, history logs, and other data useful to provide a tailored answer.

Monitoring and automated repair handle issues before they happen

Many vendors automatically detect issues and proactively create cases to resolve them, or even repair them automatically. Fewer issues, fewer reactive support interactions.

Should you continue to invest in your support portal?

If the support portal is less and less popular, you may be wondering whether it’s worth investing in it. The answer is more nuanced than a simple yes or no. If you think of the website as pages and navigation, the answer may be no. If you think of it as a set of tools, the answer is an enthusiastic yes.

Yes! Strengthen the knowledge base

The knowledge base needs continuous attention to stay fresh and also to become more LLM-friendly. It needs to be structured so that AI agents can retrieve, interpret, cite, and act on it (as noted in a past post).

Yes! Build agents for a personalized experience

The future is an agentic experience where an AI agent, or, more likely, a set of agents, can understand the customer’s problem and context, retrieve information, diagnose the issue, perform permitted actions, and escalate when necessary.

Yes! To build trust

The traditional home page may no longer be the main or preferred entry point for support, but, for the time being, it is a source of stability and trust. It should look organized, branded, and well thought-out, even if most users either bypass it or just interact with your chatbot.