Annoyingly polite customer service form letters

[Wassercrats]

I've noticed openers like this from a few companies. Does anyone know who originated this annoying trend and have any contact information for them?

Hello Barry,


Thank you for writing to MSN Hotmail Technical Support.

"This is Sharon and I am responding to your issue on the error messages
that you encountered when downloading Hotmail account via Outlook
Express.

I can understand the importance of this matter to you and the need for
the issue to be resolved immediately.

Barry, we appreciate the time you took in bringing this to our attention
and we truly value customer feedback such as yours, as it helps us
continue to improve the service we provide...."

By the way, I never said I need the issue resolved immediately.

[Randall]

Does anyone know who originated this annoying trend and have any contact information for them?

What, so you can email them and get an annoyingly polite reply?

Randall

[Bob]

Whewwwwwwwwwwwwwwww...

I was scared Barry was referring to me...

Not the "Polite" part but the "Annoying" part

-Bob

[Randall]

Hi Bob.

Randall

[Wassercrats]

If I posted a complaint about Futurequest, it would probably be in Questions and Suggestions. Nothing annoying like that yet, but if Futurequest gets much bigger, you'll probably hire some PR expert that tells you do use the same type openers, and then I might say something.

I wonder if there's some study that says an opening like that works somehow or if it's just some "expert's" theory.

[MPaul]

What I find funny in this canned response is that they actually include "This is Sharon" to make it look like it's from an actual person but when I read it, it sounded like a robot's voice in my head.

BTW, what do you need MSN Hotmail for anyway? There's Gmail now, you know .

[Bob]

Hello Randall,


Thank you for writing to the FutureQuest Community Forums.

"This is Bob and I am responding to your issue "Hi to Bob".

Bob is a Bot and doesn't understand "Hi", "Hello" or "G'Day" but
Bob the Bot does appreciate the "Hi" nonetheless.

I can understand the importance of this matter to you and the need for
the issue to be resolved immediately.

Randall, we appreciate the time you took in bringing this to our attention
and we truly value customer feedback such as yours, as it helps us
continue to improve the service we provide...."

Bob the Bot says "Hi" back to you and we hope this resolves this issue
for you in a timely and complete manner.

Have a nice day.

[Randall]

Hi, this is Randall. I'll be out of the office until January 19, 2038. If possible I will get back to you sometime before the sun explodes and the giant bird-creatures start feasting on our bones.

Until then, please contact Wassercrats if you need an immediate complaint.

Randall

[Wassercrats]

I have a wassercrats-at-hotmail email address that I think I should keep, especially considering the couple of Wassercrats imposters out there, and I don't like using experimental things (assuming Gmail is still experimental) for important (or semi-important) mail. I think I should keep polisource-at-hotmail too.

[Syneryder]

I may actually have a lead on this. I don't know *who* started it, but I know some companies recently switched to that kind of email. They're getting complaints from customers who say they're being rude by not including that fluff. By adding it, the companies are trying to avoid customer resentment, credit card chargebacks, negative rants in blogs etc etc.

Joel Spolsky is the latest convert: The Road to FogBugz 4.0: Part II. Scroll down to the "Snippets" section, and see how they've bloated 8 word answers into 111 word emails. Joel's comment:

"It's really cool and it saves a ton of time and allows us to produce the verbose email replies that are less likely to be misinterpreted."

Oh, and in case anyone is confused, I'm not saying it's a good thing!