You raise a lot of good points, but given the constraints presented to the applicant I think that's as good as anyone could do. E.g. the customer feeling powerless is a true reflection of his being powerless as well; when it comes to this sort of thing I go for as much honesty as is palatable.
The "get back to you in an hour" ... not sure about that. You don't want to string someone along with a series of these, and in this artificial case he has no idea exactly how long it'll be before he can get back to the customer. Worse, if enough customers are messed up he'd be sending a lot of identical messages like that out, and for each reply he'd need to make a more personal reply.
The points you make about his interacting with the tech team are well taken, but we might assume the info gathering was already done (ideally there's a ticket system and he could confirm that before sending this sort of reply), and I'm not sure they're relevant for a first level screen like this. If the company has its act together, their next step would be to test all that with some of the people he'd be working together with in the future.
I see where you're coming from, but I still disagree. The last thing a customer wants is a reply that has no useful content outside of apology.
Even if he was powerless to help at that moment, the customer does not want to hear that. The customer wants to believe that they are being helped and that the person on the other end of the line is actively taking steps to get them there.
The "get back to you in an hour" ... not sure about that. You don't want to string someone along with a series of these, and in this artificial case he has no idea exactly how long it'll be before he can get back to the customer. Worse, if enough customers are messed up he'd be sending a lot of identical messages like that out, and for each reply he'd need to make a more personal reply.
The points you make about his interacting with the tech team are well taken, but we might assume the info gathering was already done (ideally there's a ticket system and he could confirm that before sending this sort of reply), and I'm not sure they're relevant for a first level screen like this. If the company has its act together, their next step would be to test all that with some of the people he'd be working together with in the future.