Yes, they should. More importantly though, they should offer options. When you call your cellular carrier to complain about something, you surely want them to

Yes, they should. More importantly though, they should offer options. When you call your cellular carrier to complain about something, you surely want them to apologize and offer you options. If they told you 'We experienced an error. What's next?' you'd be rightfully pissed. Why should software be held to inferior standards? Controlling how your company communicates with customers in person is hard. If you want good results, you'll have to hire great service talent and let them give customer cases lots of attention. Contrast that to putting more thought into how your app fails. Even a few days of focus on friendly, empowering failures will give you much of the same results. Take one easy win. Instead of 'Error: looks like you have a network problem', try 'Sorry, looks like you have a network problem. Can we help you somehow? [Email us]' With one more line of text and a button, you've given your customer a clear sense that you're there for her when she has problems. We've been doing this for years. The feedback we've gotten, and the relationships we've established with customers have been invaluable.