Not only is this terrible service, this is terribly dehumanizing to everybody involved. It tells me that the company could care less about its people -- and the people could care less about me. You'd be better off just insulting people. At least it'd be more honest.
Well that might be part of the plan. If someone sounds intelligent people are more likely to smell that if they push an issue they have someone on the phone that can do something. If you're talking to an idiot you are stopped dead in your tracks.
Along those lines sometimes I have to answer the phones with customer service calls. What I've found is that if I sound like a robot (very staccato) people are way less likely to bother me with other issues. If I sound intelligent and knowledgeable they are very likely to pepper me with extra questions that fall out of the realm of what we actually do. And waste more time. (Not discussing the merits of whether it pays to go "the extra mile" or not. Just highlighting people's behavior.)
I think the key question here is whether or not your job is just to provide simple data, such as answering routine questions or some such, or developing a relationship with somebody. Many companies get so enamored with systematizing their process that they lose track of the big picture (in my opinion)
I was reading somewhere that when you call the guys at Zappos, they're there for as long as you want to talk to them. They'll even go online with you searching competitor's websites if they don't have what you need.
I like the robot idea, though. Need to try that one out!
Do this many times in negotiation as well typically. Even if you know you will sell (or buy) at a certain price you can't agree to quickly.
(Once again all this depends on your product, who you are selling to and what you are trying to achieve.)
I assume that in this case, they can afford to do so because the finance charges were fraudulent in the first place (Hello, GAP)
I worked for a company (they were the U.S. market leader in their online communications niche) who took this to an extreme. They outsourced their customer service, and in a misguided effort at quality control scripted every single response a service rep was allowed to say. As in, they were literally prohibited from saying anything that was not a scripted response during a support call.
Eventually a rumor circulated that the folks responsible for retention and turnover decided to fight their poor numbers by manipulating the scripts to make it as difficult as possible to cancel service. Don't know for sure if that was true, but there was circumstantial evidence in the (sometimes comical) live chat scripts that infuriated customers posted online.