[bigiain]

Even the phrase "Reduce Customer Anxiety" would increase my anxiety if I were a customer (and steels my resolve not to become one of their "acceptably-anxious customers").

"Reduce", not "remove" - it's stinks of implying there's an acceptable level of "customer anxiety" that their platform should generate, and someone's set some easily-measurable metrics and a bunch of people's KPIs - and those people are now all working out how to game the metrics instead of solve the problems. "Hey, my bonus depends on reducing the clicks on the "Request an appeal" button. What's the easiest way to meet that goal? I _could_ start handling customer service in a professional and sympathetic way - but that's not "The Google Way". I know, I'll just move the button to a different place this quarter, rename it next quarter, and remove it all together before the end of the year."

Sorry Google-people - I know you all don't think you're doing evil, but there'a a hell of a reputation you got to overcome on the "Google just doesn't do customer service" issue.

[ufmace]

> "Hey, my bonus depends on reducing the clicks on the "Request an appeal" button..."

That sounds entirely too plausible as the real root cause of this problem.