Bill Moses

You send off an email to the customer services division of the company you’ve just bought an expensive dongle from.  The product isn’t working as advertised, but you’re certain that the company can fix it via updates or advice.

They’ve conveniently left a nice big link on their website inviting feedback or support queries; something like service@xyz.com or askus@xyz.com.  Sounds tempting, so off your queries goes into the wild blue ether.

One of a number of things could happen with your query now:

1.  XYZ has a customer contact centre (probably in India) who lodge your query into their system and generate a semi-automated but custom response within a short space of time.

2.  XYZ has an auto-reply rule setup on their email server which seems to reply to you before you remember clicking the send button.  The reply thanks you for your email and promises a reply as your business is very important to XYZ.

3.  A reply from your mail daemon telling you that that address couldn’t be reached (a subject for another time maybe).

4.  Nothing.

I was getting tired of number 2.  The automated reply back email would get on my nerves.  It shows some thought has been put into the need for communication with the customer, but that’s as far as it went.  It’s a very 80s/90s way of answering the whole instant customer service question.

In saying this however I have decided that 4. is actually much worse.  Getting no response at all is just disconcerting.  You know XYZ still exists because you didn’t get a 3., but now you’re in a position where you wait; it could be hours, it could be days.  You’re in limbo, and there’s little you can do about it.

Common methods of communication escalation in circumstances such as these are:

Google it: see if someone has had the same issue as you and resolved it.  Why bother the company at all if you can fix it yourself.  This seems to be a Windows-age mentality, Microsoft has done a great job of conditioning the world to understand that software has bugs – live with them.

Email XYZ: you can wait for a response, and you want to give them a chance to resolve it with as much information as possible.

Phone XYZ: an immediate response is needed and you want to talk to someone with a pulse.

Visit XYZ: you need to see some bricks and mortar to be assured that this company actually exists; put a face to a name.

So…is the automated response such a bad thing after all?  It is a lazy way of handling customer responses and shows a total lack of regard for a need for human contact.  But at the end of the day its better than nothing at all which leaves your customer waiting some arbitrary period before moving their way up the communication chain.