I've worked in customer service, and the reps use 'canned text' all the time for common issues. I assumed this was common knowledge. Not doing so would be a recipe for RSI within a couple weeks.
The problem with canned text is when it's reused on the same person, which leads to anger on the part of the recepient (or suspicions that they're being serviced by a robot).
I've never seen the software on the other side of a tech support email, but I have trouble imagining that in practice. When I am trying to interact with a customer service rep that only communicates through canned responses, it will inevitably take me three times as long, with maybe five times more writing (both from me and from them) than was necessary. I can't be the only one who has this experience.
That's because they are having five conversations at once.
Click canned response one
Switch to conv 2
Click canned response 5
Switch to conv 3
Click canned response 1
See there is a response from conv 1
Switch to conv 1
Ad infinitum
The systems (especially for tier one support) have complete conversation templates. The people supporting the products at tier one often have no clue beyond trying to search for keywords in the knowledge base. Turn over is high enough that training is too expensive (of course, turn over is high due to lack of training).
The article is talking about email, but in the case of live chat it varies from company to company. I did my time in chat support, but in my case I wrote my own templates and triggered them with AutoHotKey. By the time I left I'd written a bible of hotkeys for supporting our app.
You're right about there being five concurrent conversations though. Part of this is that the customers would take a great deal of time to respond, so it made more sense for me to be helping multiple people because I could juggle five conversations better than most people could handle one. The alternative was keeping all the other people in the queue while one person took two minutes per sentence to describe what their problem was.
It really depends on the problem. The canned text exists because certain issues are so common that they can be resolved with a pre-written response. That's typically the first thing the staff lean on when they see a contact from a customer.
The bigger problem is that customer service is a McJob, and pays like one, and the staff only deliver service on par with the salary they're given. Generally the people serving you could be getting paid multiples of their current salary if they could find a pizza delivery gig (no joke, pizza delivery can pay up to $30 an hour counting tips).
The problem with canned text is when it's reused on the same person, which leads to anger on the part of the recepient (or suspicions that they're being serviced by a robot).