Feedback is a tool
The software company I work for is very customer-driven. We acknowledge that without feedback from our users we wouldn't be able to develop products that are useful and usable in our market. Any customer comments, good and especially bad, is like gold dust to us. It helps us improve without having had to pay for consultants or schedule user-focus groups. For this reason, we have an internal system in place that encourages such feedback to be channeled through to the right people. Feedback can originate from sales, customer support, our online support forum or even ad-hoc feedback that we notice on public blogs and newsgroups. Product managers periodically collate this information and ensure that future versions of our product set address the pertinent problems, thereby improving the user experience in an evolutionary fashion.
Therefore, it always surprises me when I spend time giving feedback to various organisations I've interacted with only to get fobbed off with a standard (possibly automated) response. They're not interested in listening and improving - they just want to process my 'query' as quickly as possible and move on.
If you're going to run a support department with this policy, it may as well be done with a little tact. I recently raise a query with my ISP, PlusNet, querying the slow connection. It was almost certainly because I had reached my download limit and although I had opted to upgrade, this hadn't appeared to have kicked in. I wrote a polite query to this effect, and also added a concern with regards to the seemily incorrect monthly rate that it appeared I had been subscribed to (£20.99 instead of £19.99).
I don't know how PlusNet's support service works, but I got an extremely lengthly standard response detailing nine troubleshooting options I should try to troubleshoot speed issues. All I wanted was a simple confirmation that the speed issues were because the change hadn't kicked in, and how long this typically takes, along with an explanation of the monthly charge amount.
It wouldn't surprise me if there was an automated system that spotted "speed" in my query and fired it off automatically. More likely it was a tired support engineer who chose to skim the query without properly trying to understand the question. It's simply laziness and shoddy customer service.
As I had received a standard reply, clearly my specific question about the monthly rate hadn't been answered (or even read). Naturally I responded, repeating my question and drawing attention to this. By this time the connection speed issue had rectified itself so I didn't push this further. The simple reply (from a different support engineer this time) was:
"Thank you for your query. I can confirm that your usage was affected by the allowance being used up. I can also confirm that your Option 3 package will be £19.99 per month."
There was no apology for having fobbed me off the first time and there was no apology or explanation why my monthly rate had been incorrectly set to £20.99. They just rectified it and hoped I would go away. Which I did. I couldn't be bothered anymore.
Cambridge City Council
I wanted to pay my council tax by way of internet transfer. I sent a query to Cambridge City Council asking them why they weren't listed in the built-in council list in my bank's internet banking. Every other council under the sun seemed to be there. Why not them? Actually I had first mentioned this to be bank who explained that they merely post the account details for those councils who supply them. Cambridge City Council hadn't.
I also suggested to the council that they might consider publishing such important payment details on the back of their bill, alongside all the other methods of payment. The utility companies all do this now, and it's clearly the way forward now that internet banking is becoming the norm.
After twenty-one days without a response, I fire out another message politely asking whether I sent the original question to the right address. As it was getting close to the payment deadline I decided to do some detective work using Google and eventually found a page that described the appropriate bank account details: http://www.cambridge.gov.uk/ccm/content/benefits-and-council-tax/council-tax/how-to-pay-your-council-tax.en
I quickly sent an email to the council explaining that I'd solved my problem via the above URL, but I still stress that it would have been helpful if this information had also figured on the bill itself.
The response was short and missed the point. It simply listed the exact same account details that I had found myself. It didn't acknowledge my suggestion at all. I can't help myself and I reply (politely) to this effect. I haven't heard back.
Why don't they care? In the case of the council, why should they? They aren't competing with other councils to take my money - only they are entitled to it. If I don't pay, I get in trouble. It doesn't matter how hard I found the process, the responsibility is on my shoulders and there's little incentive for them to help me. It's the same reason why the tax return form is so confusing. It's not as if you can choose to submit your taxes elsewhere.
Conclusion
In both cases, what I would have expected is to not only receive an apology for the 'misunderstanding', but also to reassured me that they appreciate my feedback and would pass it on to the relevant person. Responding with standard templates without properly reading the query is a clear failure in customer service and having this brought to their attention at no cost should be encouraged by their internal systems, not dismissed. It is probable that such customer service departments have their performance measured on the number of calls that are processed, rather than the quality of the responses.
Also, they're going to fob me off, why not have the good sense to pretend that my feedback was helpful. That way I'm happy and so are they.
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