David Pogue has a nice (or awful, depending on your perspective) example from one of his readers of woeful tech support, delivered via one of those “live chat” applications which are springing up all over the place. When combined with the remote delivery of said tech support (in this case, the tech support guy’s name was purportedly “Sean” but who knows whether he was sitting in New York or New Delhi) this makes for some bad results. I’ve certainly had several of these experiences myself, which can mix the worst of IM/SMS jargon and generally bad English.
This is another of those examples where the internally-facing (or at least shareholder-facing) prerogative to save money on customer support is in conflict with the external-(customer)-facing prerogative of customer satisfaction. Live chat can be a boon - since it’s live you rarely have to wait, in comparison with call centres. But it can also make for a much worse experience once you actually get going. And more than once I’ve been told that I need to chat or even talk with a different department once I’m halfway through the live chat I thought would get me what I needed. More thought needed from all the companies involved in this stuff.
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