Q&A for customer messages

Not that I’m aware of, but would you really want to use it if they did?

Think of it another way. When’s the last time you called an organization, got the now industry-standard initial contact of pre-recorded options (Press 1 for xxxx Press 2 for xxxx etc) and ended up getting funneled into listening to a recorded message which didn’t satisfy the reason you called, causing you to re-dail and try pressing different options? Quite a lot I’d expect. Did the recording ever satisfy the reason for your call? I know it never has for me. Does it tick you off? I know it does me. Would you not have felt more valued and less annoyed if the phone was picked up by a person who could then engage in conversation to get to the root of the problem without you being led a merry song and dance?

Whenever we’re met with these Answer-By-Numbers scenarios, we’re immediately thrown into a bizarre game. The aim of the game is to fight your way through a series of questions and avoid being led down a recorded-answer blind alley and the phone hung up on you. The endgame objective is to reach the Holy Grail of speaking to someone. There’s no fun in this game and, as anyone who’s played it (and we all have) knows, it brings nothing but frustration and we’ve got better things to do with our time. Although we’ve no way to vent our frustration and retaliate against being treated that way, this isn’t the case with Amazon customers. They’ve got A-Zs and Negative Feedback in their armoury and, as we all well know, those can be devastating.

So, do you really want to go down the auto-response route?