Today, I went into an app I use to schedule a taxi. I ordered the taxi and when I entered my number, the app told me that number was already in use. Of course it is, it's my cell phone number that I use in your app. So, I went up to their technical support to enter an issue and they use captcha. I failed several times at discerning the words. So, then I tried the sound part, but it reminded me of the "space jam" of the Grateful Dead. I got more out of the Dead than I could discern from the sound. So, I ended up walking away after 20 minutes of trying to connect to their support.
So, it makes me think about when we bolt on stuff to solve problems like spam and robots, but make our customers do mental gymnastics, are we treating our customers worse than robots? As a human, I shouldn't have to take a Turing test. One shouldn't have to figure out word puzzles to contact technical support.
So, as you study your customer's interactions with your company, try to contact your own support and see how hard it is. Make your UX peeps fill out 100 captchas and see if they can get through. Look at how many people begin to enter a support issue and then walk away. They don't go there because they are lost.
Don't make your customer's life harder to make your life easier.
