Customer Service Robots

I would like to make a documentary on the customer service gnomes behind the curtain at big online merchants like Amazon and Netflix. I have been going in circles with each company for the past few days…just managing to wade through all of the FAQ information to find a page where you can actually contact them is difficult enough, but then once you do email them they send another boilerplate email that is related to but does not answer your question, and which does not allow a reply. So you start the cycle again… I think they should assume that anyone intelligent enough to get past their FAQ defenses and find the “email-us” page is intelligent enough to have a legitimate question that is not already answered in the FAQ, and therefore should get a response from a human being. 

I did eventually get a response from a human being in each case, after going a few rounds. I want to know who these people are, and how these things eventually do come to their attention. How many questions actually get past their automated defenses and get through to the gnomes? Is it just one guy behind the curtain laughing as he fends off the general public? Or are there an army of gnomes? Who are these people? Where are they? Do they work together in some sort of call center, or are they scattered all over the world, working at home in their pajamas?

On second thought that would be a very boring movie. But I still want to know. Maybe just an expose’ on Hard Copy or something.