Thank you? Let’s open a support ticket for that.

I forgot most of the polite manners and etiquette my parents and teachers deperately tried to brainwash me with during my younger years. But I still remember to say “thank you”. Maybe it was because Gary Vaynerchuck reminded me with his latest book “The thank you economy“, but I still try to say thank you every time someone helps me. When the waiter brings me my cutlery. When a collegue helps me out. When someone answers my silly questions on twitter. When my travel agency Sunweb pro-actively called me to help me rebook my vacation because of the Egyptian riots.

So whenever a company answers one of my silly helpdesk questions, I tend to reply with “thank you”.

And their reply usually is along the lines of

Thank you very much for the email you just sent us.

Your email got reference number 9065378.

We will get back to you within the next 24 hours.

Contact Center.

Which pretty much sucks out all my goodwill to write a thank you note to any company ever again. Especially with the amounts of silly questions I tend to ask and the amounts of thankyous I need to thank all those hardworking customer support reps who answer my silly questions.

Yes, tools like Zendesk and even Getsatisfaction made it simple and efficient to help customers. I don’t mind getting a semi-automatic answer as long as it’s correct and fast. But please, act human. And don’t open a support ticket every time I appreciate what you did.

It is a small and simple addition to your automated customer support system. But it ensures you of many future thankyous. As proven by this Zappos support ticket (ht @minorissues).