[rspeele]

This post might have been less profoundly slimy had it not proudly reeled off emails from customers who actually did take time out of their day to write their replies, thinking that some form of person-to-person communication had already been established.

Look at all these suckers who took the bait! Just think what automatic catfishing could do for your business!

Now, if only you could automate the second layer and keep that Awesome Customer Engagement going, all without the pesky time sink of human involvement. Just do a sentiment analysis on the email the customer sent and send them the appropriate response video -- either "Wow Andrew, thanks so much for your reply Andrew! It's always great to hear from our favorite customers like you Andrew!" or "Andrew, I'm so sorry to hear that you aren't completely satisfied. Andrew, I'm putting you directly in touch with Jen, who leads our Andrew Satisfaction department. Just give her a call at 555-123-4567 and follow the prompts to indicate whether this is about a return, a new order, or the status of an existing order."

[drewzero1]

Next week on Show HN: a subscription service that allows consumers to send "convincingly" "personal" automatic replies to fool companies into thinking this s** actually works.

[rspeele]

I like it. With advanced enough technology we may be able to completely automate the process of driving customer engagement and the process of being an engaged customer. That writhing ouroboros could generate trillions of dollars in pretend value.