The other day I contacted a company as I was having issues with its program and to help them assess the issue I actually set them screenshots of the bug. At first the customer service person that responded to me gave me a template reply saying how they are investigating the issue. The response I got after was disappointing as it didn’t even seem like they read the message. To make it crazier after communicating for a bit the person then asked for screenshots of the issue if possible.
To be fair it did seem like the person just copied and pasted a template that had all the standard details that they would send anyone. But it makes you wonder if having too many template responses for your business can be bad thing. While it can be great to maintain a standard of sort it can be frustrating for the customer where it looks like the representative is just lazy and isn’t really sitting down to understand the situation. It comes across more as look for keywords and then a template to use.
I think overall it’s better to have templates as a training tool to teach you how to respond where people should then use that knowledge to be able to adapt to the person’s specific situation and needs. Otherwise you may as well have robots at the desk where people will understand why you get responses that talk like one.