Fairphone Customer Support Update - August 2025

Discuss The Industry
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Dear Fairphoners,

We’d like to take a moment to share an update on the progress we’ve been making to improve your experience with Fairphone’s customer support. We’re not yet at the level of service we aim to provide, and are taking concrete steps to address this.

First, we’re hearing those of you who’ve reached out, whether through this forum, on social media, or via our support channels. Your feedback has been invaluable and we fully understand how disappointing it can be when support falls short of expectations, especially in moments when quick and effective communication is most needed, and when waiting times are long. We’re with you, seeing you, and are working hard to get better.

Over the last months we’ve been implementing multiple measures to ensure a smoother customer support experience for any pending or future requests, and are optimistic that the results will be felt tangibly more and more over the coming period:

The customer support team continues growing
We have made significant investments in expanding our support capacity. We have doubled our customer support team, hired a new team of agents, and as of July, we welcomed a new Head of Customer Support to lead ongoing improvements across the board.

Less reopened tickets
The percentage of reopened tickets has decreased over the last few months, meaning that we’re getting better at solving things from the get go. Over the last month, as an example, only about 10% of issues need to be looked at again after the first fix, and we expect this to keep decreasing.

We reinstated Live Chat
As of June**,** our live chat feature has been reinstated. It offers immediate access to a Fairphone agent for real-time support. Since this reintroduction, our Live Chat Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) score has reached 83.46. This exceeds our target of 80, which is also the industry benchmark. We see this as a clear sign that the changes we are making are beginning to have a positive impact.

We launched a virtual customer support assistant
We’ve recently introduced a virtual AI assistant to help customers troubleshoot and find answers quickly. It is available at any time of day and complements our agents support team by easing response times and improving accessibility.

We are acutely aware that despite these improvements, some of you have been waiting for some time for a response to an existing ticket. Please, know that we are actively working through the backlog with increased resources and renewed focus. We understand that waiting is difficult, and we appreciate your continued patience as we work to reach each and every pending query.

Thank you again for your patience, your honesty, and your trust. We will continue to keep you informed as we move forward. Our community can rest assured that our customer support is of highest priority for us, and that we are fully committed to keep improving by the day.

The Fairphone team.

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So whats the turn around time for a ticket FP wants to achieve and when will this be achieved? When will the backlog be resolved?

Will chat remain open for only 2 hours a day or does FP aim to have this open during business hours?

So when actually will customers see the impact of the things that have been done?

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Hello and thanks for sharing the update.

I know you are reading the forum but there are many posts where we tried to tag you in order to get a reply and/or clarification and unfortunately it did not happen.

So I am allowing myself to bring back here one of my posts as it seems particularly relevant

Could you please let us know if that is a standard procedure that when a user confirms having a ticket opened, they are never transferred to an agent, but there is a notice added to their ticket? How many of those instances have been recorded and followed up?

Really hoping to see some clarification here

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I searched for the live chat in hours 10-12 but all i could find was the AI assistant, which is at best useless and at worst even deleterious. I asked how to solve a issue with fingerprint sensor on fairphone 5 and he suggested to update the phone(which leads to a bricked fairphone). Also, it seems to be sometimes confused on which phone i have ( i said 5 and he says ‘your fairphone 2’). How could this help? There are many people with a bricked fairphone that can’t be reverted to android 14 and it’s not working, mine for 2 weeks now, others for even more time i suspect. My ticket received an answer that simply says ‘we are taking care of the issue’ after 10 days waiting.

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Hi all,

Thank you for your honest feedback. I completely understand the concerns raised here, and I’d like to share a bit more context.

  • Live chat availability: We reduced live chat from 4 hours to 2 hours daily because a new group of colleagues joined our support team and needed proper training. It’s been about 2.5 weeks now, and training is still ongoing. In September, we’ll evaluate whether or not we will extend the hours again without compromising quality.

  • Why we use AI filtering: Many incoming questions can already be answered through resources on our website. By using an AI filter first, we can make sure that people who truly need to speak to an agent get through more efficiently, while our team focuses on the more complex cases.

  • Looking ahead: We’re working hard behind the scenes on broader improvements to our services. These things take time to do properly, and we want to make sure the changes we roll out are lasting and meaningful.

We know there’s still work to do, and your feedback helps us keep moving in the right direction. Thank you for your patience and for continuing to share your experiences with us.

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Thank you for some clarification and some additional info @anon76468197. Unfortunately you didn’t answer to the concerns that it’s only possible to speak to a human agent by lying to the AI-bot. Is this really desirable behaviour of your AI-bot system?

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I also failed to reach a human on Live chat even though I called during ‘live’ hours. ‘Tin’ was like a brick wall!

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I was also unsuccessful getting a live agent two days in row. I have sent an email request as well and have not heard anything back.

All I am trying to find out is the status of my order but the AI assistant can’t handle that. This is extremely frustrating. This is not a good start to my fairphone journey.

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Thank you for sharing and being a bit more specific in what is actually going on at FP regarding the state of support.
I am still missing answers on some of the excellent questions @yvmuell asked.

What is the goals for turn around time for a ticket, and when do you expect this to be achieved?
And when can we as customers and supporters expect to see the impact?

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Hi all,

As I mentioned, like any company, we need to filter out messages.

To make sure we address these questions properly, I’ve arranged a call next week with some of the Fairphone moderators and the relevant internal teams. I’ll share your input (including your question about the AI bot) with them.

Regarding answering times, I can not share any numbers at the moment but know that our team is working really hard towards a solution to improve the current situation. We will also continue posting updates when we have things to share.

Thanks for your patience and understanding. :slight_smile:

Sarah

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Hi Rafael,

Sorry to hear this has been your experience so far. Would you mind sending me a DM please?

Thanks.

Sarah

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So how come your AI-bot shares a 24-48 h response time when asked if you’re not able to share these response times? Is Tin just hallucinating? Are you using Tin to deflect honest customer questions? Do you actually use or check your own AI-bot yourselves? Communication by FP and the way the AI-bot is used is muddy and troubling to say the least.

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Can anyone help explain what my options are?

I have a Fairphone 5 which is bricked following my efforts to return to FPOS after using /e/os for a period. The latter stopped working with my banking apps so I had to return to FPOS. The process of re-installing failed and I now have a black screen and I understand my phone is now is in EDL mode which only Fairphone support have the files to rectify. I contacted Fairphone on the 11th of June, over 2 months ago and received an acknowledgment receipt and case number. Since then I have heard nothing. I have tried contacting support live chat during the 2 hour window on several occasions but only get stonewalled by the AI interface. At one point the AI seemed to suggest that I could send my phone somewhere else but said it couldn’t tell me where. Do I now have a valueless brick which cannot/will not be repaired? I have been using an old phone in the meantime but it is very unsatisfactory because of it’s slowness and security limitations and I need to get something that works properly soon. Should I buy an new phone and write off my Fairphone 5, 5 years before I planned to? Does it have any scrap value? Is there anything that anyone can suggest to get out of this situation other than giving up on Fairphone? Sorry if this is incoherent but I am rather frustrated by the situation. Thanks for listening!

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As unpleasant as it is, the informal recommendation is to deny the existence of your ticket to the chat bot – apparently the only way to get through to a human being this way.

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Did you pay with a credit card? If so, contact your credit card company and see if there’s anything they can do.

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The procedure below have worked a few times, it feels a bit awkward but, there’s no shame in lying to an AI. Just call it hallucinations if anyone asks.

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Does Fairphone also plan to introduce a transparent average response time indicator or queue status so that users can see how long to expect to resolve their request?

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Thanks Runge. That seems to have worked. I am promised an email telling me how to return my phone in the next 24hrs. The support worker was very friendly and helpful. It feels like a major step forwards.

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That would be awesome!
I am pretty sure it may only be implemented when the reaction times are low.
But it also would create some kind of trust. So it could be a goal for FP to do so.

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Actually I saw a queue status last week when I used the live chat… it says how many people are in line before you