Companies nowadays never seem to say, "thank you for contacting us" or similar. Instead, they say, "thank you for reaching out to us" with the phrase "reaching out to us" replacing the word "contact".
I do not approve of this. If one is contacting a company, quite often this will be to make a complaint about the company concerned. Addressing the complaint by initially saying, "thank you for reaching out to us" seems to be a tactic to try to establish a touchy-feely rapport between themselves and their customers.
"Reaching out" rather than "contact" connotes that the person is asking for help, maybe even after a great deal of hesitancy on their parts e.g. someone feeling suicidal and wanting help. Hence, it's not appropriate phrase to use for when someone is complaining about how unethical or incompetent that company is!
If "reaching out" is used for all forms of contact, then "reaching out" eventually replaces "contact" and presumably if someone feels distressed for whatever reason, then getting this response "thanks for reaching out" will be that much less consoling.
But this "reaching out" replacing "contact" is part of the growing devaluation of the English language.
