Automated Web responses to consumer comments are great time-savers, presuming the programming assumptions
don’t get too defensive. This is not to suggest that Domino’s Pizza has reason to be defensive—although we continue to love this 3-year-old Colbert Report examination of Dominos quality—but their comment seemed to be a bit on edge when a shopper praised the product, posting “Best Pizza Ever! Pan Pizza (smiley face). Keep up the good work, guys!” The system replied “So sorry about that” and then asked for more details “so we can have this addressed.”
This was noted by Consumer Reports’ Consumerist site, which added the appropriate comment: “You know how some people are conditioned to believe that any statement directed at them must be a complaint, so they don’t know how to react when someone says something nice?” The story speculated the pizza chain’s online bot might have been trained to assume that a combination of exclamations points and smileys might be sarcasm. Although true, it might be even simpler than that. Such a combination is more likely to be from a negative comment than a positive one. Either way, what message does this send site visitors and prospective customers?
