This really shouldn't be a surprise. Even the outsourced Indian human support lines, where they are required to recite the corporate litany, and monitored to make sure they do, are really just human shields that protect the corporation from accountability...

Most of the outsourced support I've tried to get help from really might as well be chatbots. They will just keep repeating the same things which don't actually answer my question.

They were mechanical Turks waiting for the real bot upgrade.

I think the human on the other side is given tools with canned responses to select from so they too often lean on that.

That and they are required to have like 20+ windows open.

I could not do that job.

I’m travelling in Asia at the moment, and I had forgotten how much I loved the WhatsApp customer support approach. Most businesses have a WhatsApp account, and you just send them a DM when you need to talk to somebody. Response times are typically very quick, and sending a DM takes sooooo much less effort than a phone call. I wish the rest of the world would adopt SEA’s love for WhatsApp business accounts.

In the US, Apple's iMessage support chat service is incredible and I'm correspondingly much more likely to do business with companies that offer it, just in case I end up needing support.