www.asi.com.au

  Customer service.  I don’t know about you, but I find this phrase to be a bit of an oxymoron these days.  It’s a strange quaint phrase bringing to mind a simpler time and place, maybe Keokuk, Iowa, 1981.

 Customer service began the fall from grace in the mayhem of the last significant recession in the early 1980’s.  Businesses began to realize what they could do without. And, it would appear, having folks around to help other folks figure out what to buy, how to fix it, or to solve a problem with it is something we think we can do without.  Spending a chunk of my mid young adult hood in the 80’s I didn’t think too much of it. I was in a profession that was being downsized, merged and otherwise swallowed whole, but in my youthful naivety I thought we would be able to hire back those people we laid off in hopes the budget would balance, when times improved.  I had underestimated the Reagan Revolutionaries.  Seems those chaps weren’t going to be happy until everyone was busily unemployed. (See the Great Financial Meltdown of 2008-Reagan is gone but his legacy lives on.)

  Thus began the 90’s and of course along came technology. There were answering machines which morphed into auto attendants (That sounds like a flight attendant for my vehicle- which would most definitely be customer service, I’d like one of those. I wonder if tipping is expected or required. Then again, you don’t tip flight attendants, but you do tip valet parking attendants, but maybe that is so they don’t back your car into a concrete post; it is all rather confusing.) Then came computing to answer, call, tabulate, and otherwise make our lives more efficient. Ever notice how the paperless revolution is killing more trees than ever before?  I am hoping they are growing Computer Paper Trees for that purpose. I have always liked the idea of Napkin Trees and Paper Bag Trees.  A tree wouldn’t have to attain old growth status to be a Dixie Cup would it?

 So, here’s the thing.  Huge corporations that got that way by gobbling each other up, have what they call customer service departments.  One would think that a company the size New Jersey would have thousands of people to take phone calls or emails from folks like you and me whose whatzis that they purchased the other day won’t turn on, or the cable televison HD box isn’t working right or whatever the problem might be. In my mind’s eye I see a huge office space filled with cubicles and people with headsets taking thousands of calls.  I will let you in on a highly classified secret, there IS a huge room filled with cubicles but it is staffed by one person on a rotary phone, a legal pad and a pencil. (No pencil sharpener, just the pencil.)

   

            soe.ucdavis.edu

   I discovered the truth one day when I was trying to figure out why my phone company representative hadn’t shown up to install a new DSL line and box that I had ordered and scheduled the week before. (Of course the phone company is all centralized for my convenience –I am not sure where phone central for my location is, but it would be good to know so I could stop by and say “hi” to all the people who used to live in my town and do service calls that I got to know and like. I am thinking they may all be in India. I guess you don’t really drop by India.)  Anyway, I called the communication company. (Has anyone else realized that the last thing communications companies want to do is to communicate-especially with the people who pay money to keep them in business?) I placed my phone call and the first thing that I had to navigate was the auto attendant.  As we all know, once we venture into auto attendant land the choice you have to make is never offered. Dial 1 for Spanish, 2 for Swahili, or 3 for American Sign Language.  Where the hell is the English?  A few of us still speak English or a facsimile there of.  It is a given that you will go round robin within the attendant at least three or four times ending up at “Main Menu” with the same three useless choices. (Maybe tipping is a good idea for auto attendants.)  I did discover that with some companies if you hit “0” sometimes that takes you to a person who then will send you to an extension that plugs into the auto attendant. 

   I have lately been exposed to voice recognition software that can understand common phrases.  They have humanized the auto attendant it seems.  Unfortunately, the technology doesn’t seem to understand, “Could I talk to a human being, please?”   It does however recognize, “YOU STUPID, STINKING, SON OF A &&%%##@!!!! “.  If you get to that point normally you can talk to a person; the guy with the legal pad and a pencil.  He always has to put you on hold while he “checks your account”.  The hold time can vary from two to three days to infinity. 

                                                                                                                 www.getentrepreneurial.com     

  I have developed an amusing, (at least to me) and productive way to spend my hold time.  Whenever I have to make a call to “customer service” I make sure I am stationed near my computer.   When I finally get to the holding pen, I check the time and then I Google up the company I am calling.  On most web sites if you dig deeply enough you can find the names of the board of directors of the company.  I spend my hold time writing a nasty letter to every person on the board of directors letting them know how idiotic it is to have a non existent department listed called “customer service” and what I really think of their product and how long I have been waiting to talk to someone about my issue. I tell them that if I had a nuclear weapon, I am, at this very moment angry enough to use it or at least relay their coordinates to the air force, the North Koreans or whoever is in charge of nuclear weapons these days so it can be launched using correct protocol.   I then send those babies out into the US Mail. While satisfaction takes a bit longer, one can’t just press “Delete” and make a message arriving snail mail go away.  And hats off to our postal workers, every verbal blast that I have ever sent has indeed wound up in the hands of those to whom they were addressed.  And how do I know that? Because those dudes at the top don’t like to be bothered with irate customers.  It creates a ripple in their day-lets them know that while they are pretty well insulated from what is really happening in their companies, they can still be weaseled out and held accountable.  And they CALL ME and they fix the problem. Oh and one other benefit…sometimes I get free stuff.  One particularly eventful month I think I raked in several hundred dollars worth of free goodies.  Apparently goodwill is important if I have just ruined someone’s morning coffee.

 Of course as an added benefit, I get to blow off steam at someone else’s expense.  In the name of customer service, it’s the least I can do.