Zendesk is a system/software they use to automate certain processes, which is different to outsource tasks. The support team still is inhouse.
And isnt expoena also rather software? I would neither call this outsourcing of tasks.
What is outsourced since, a long time already is software development.
Don’t get me wrong I value your statements much higher than mine… but do you know this for a fact (I’m really asking)?
I certainly don’t because … and that’s the very issue here. … In my opinion Fairphone’s information offerings are extremely sparse when it comes to transparency about their customer/company doings.
The issue is the same for expoena but here on the example of technical support…
Whenever I approach Fairphone support (and I have to do this a lot unfortunately), I always get forwarded to Zendesk servers (that’s a fact). So no “support.fairphone.com” but “fairphone.zendesk.com”. I mean, they don’t even try to hide it like others (see cloudfront customers etc)
So even when communication between FP customers and FP support is confidential, i.e. encrypted (which I doubt), I’m pretty sure Zendesk has still the master key to decryption and thus to all of my private (definitely meta) data… like all the other cloud software service providers out there, too. Even though technically that’s not exactly outsourcing, practically it is for me.
… and even if the support team is actually also FP staff (which I doubt), the critical parts (FP looses grip on their own core business skills and pays with customer data) which are what makes outsourcing for me troubling, still exist.
Furthermore my doubt is based on the communication with FP support. Often I only get standard text block respones and when I ask for more specifics or ask for a solution for my problem that is better suited to me personally I always get a “no can do” or other “that’s not a standard solution, so we deny it as a matter of principle”. For me that always feels like the person (or human chat bot) I’m talking with has virtually no insight or authorization wrt. Fairphone’s core business.
In my (much smaller) company (than Fairphone) I work a lot with our own support team. We don’t use any third party services, every customer is addressed as if they’re our only and most important customer, we only do individual problem solutions, and sometimes they’re even passed to the person in charge directly (like the developer who created a certain part of our products). I don’t expect that from Fairphone but at least be transparent about it.
…and before I hijack this thread even more, I better stop. 
tl;dr: IMO FP is depending to much on (proprietary) third party business solutions which is contradictory to general sustainability and FP should be at least more transparent about it, so that there can be a public discussion about it.
Support team are FP staff and zendesk is software many companies use, yes I know this for sure. Else they would put fake pictures of staff or job offers on their webside.
And why should they hide the software they use? There is nothing criminal to use software. I would rather be sceptical for companies hiding it. It reads as if you want tranparency and when you get it, its wrong.
Using tools to collect data or ease support work, isnt outsourcing per my definition. My job is the typical outsourced job. Companies hire my company to do the Project Management and both of us use software to do our job. Thats the world in 2024. Did I like the more personal old way more? Yes. Do I believe it will come back? No not with capitalism as the wold wide primary economic thinking, as the only way of this is growth.
Would you ask Samsung or Apple the same? Why should we customer have any discussion about company decisions or how they do their jobs? Fairphone isnt our friend, its a company and how they use our data is covered in the privacy policy which also names the third party provider they work with.
Why would sharing tools be less sustainable then everyone doing their own thing?
I met several Fairphone Support employees in person in late June 2023 at Fairphone’s 10th Anniversary event in Amsterdam (feel free to match the all-group photo with the individual team member photos below). A Fairphone Support employee actually hosted the main part of the event.
And Zendesk has been used by Fairphone from day one (Fairphone 1), all throughout when Support was in-house, then outsorced (or backed up out of house) for a transitional (Fairphone 2) period like 6 years ago and then in-house again.