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by viraptor 1203 days ago
This is an example of a coherent and fairly complete issue description. It may seem like fluff in this case to rephrase the original request, but it makes sense as a blanket policy. It allows the support person to repeat the request with the official terminology and give the customer a chance to say "no, that's not what I meant" before you get 10 emails deep.

Consider that a lot of the support requests come as stream of consciousness posts with typos and no punctuation, written quickly and in anger. This issue could've been "new laptip does not take password. Its correct many times, want my many back" (I'm not joking, I've seen worse) - rephrasing and asking for the missing details can be super helpful there.

See a random selection from the first page of posts for why you'd want to verify you understood the customer: https://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Notebook-Software-and-How-To-Q... , https://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Notebook-Software-and-How-To-Q... , https://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Notebook-Software-and-How-To-Q...

Applying this practice everywhere instead of "where needed" reminds me of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pointing_and_calling