How Not To Do Customer Support

I recently sent in a support ticket to evite about a pretty huge issue with their site. I can't say what it is - yet - but it's not a little bug. It's a huge, massive, gaping issue.

Anyway, I get the usual "thank you for your email" auto-response. Then, two hours later, I get this:

Thank you for your patience. The issues you have experienced have been corrected, and you may now create, edit, and manage your invitation as desired. If you experience any further difficulties, you may alleviate this by deleting the cookies and clearing your browser’s cache, as they may still contain the error page information. We regret any inconvenience this may have caused you. If we can further assist you, please contact us.

Uhh, no, it hasn't been fixed. In fact, judging from the non-sensicalness of the response, they didn't even read my email. What this means is:

  1. They have an auto-response, on a time delay, saying that they've fixed the issue when they haven't done squat.
  2. Some minion clicks a button to say that they're fixed issues when they haven't done squat.

Either way, they're just blindly telling their users that they're fixed issues that they haven't even looked into. Sweet.

Funnily enough, this response probably actually works a good percentage of the time out of the pure flakiness of their site.

By contrast, I've had pretty good experience with customer support at other companies:

  1. Facebook: Once Seattle Anti-Freeze exceeded about 1500 members, we could no longer send messages to the group or invite the group to an event. Facebook employees Luke Shepard and Paul McDonald got those limits raised. Thanks guys!!
  2. Pingg: I've written in feature / bug requests. Their support team has promptly responded with well thought out responses.
  3. MyPunchBowl: After I posted about MyPunchBowl, the founder emailed me - within hours.
  4. Zoji.com: I have exchanged numerous emails with the founders.

The lesson is: Don't automatically respond to users saying that their issue has been fixed.