“Thank you for waiting. Your business is important to us.”

The Living, Breathing Oxymoron

The message repeats every few minutes, usually just long enough to interrupt the music and remind you that no one has answered. You have already worked your way through the automated menu, repeated information the company already has, and explained your problem to a system that cannot understand it. Somewhere beyond the recording, one employee may be trying to help twenty-two people at once.

There is a particular irony in being told how valuable you are while every part of the experience suggests otherwise.

Recently, I found myself dealing with a cell phone provider, the Social Security Administration, and several credit card companies while trying to close accounts for a deceased relative. None of the requests were especially unusual, yet most required more than half an hour on hold or waiting in a store lobby before I could speak with a person.

When I finally reached someone, they were usually kind. They often wanted to help. But many seemed poorly trained, uncertain about the process, or unable to do much beyond repeating what the system allowed them to say.

That may be what bothered me most. The people were not the problem. They were working inside systems that had been designed to limit both access and judgment.

There was a time when customer service was discussed as central to business success. In the early 1980s, books such as In Search of Excellence were selling off the shelves. Businesses were being told to stay close to the customer, listen carefully, respond quickly, and treat service as part of the value they offered.

Somewhere along the way, that emphasis changed.

The change was not caused by a generation of managers who suddenly stopped caring about customers. Many were simply educated to manage what could be measured. Shareholders wanted lower costs. Executives wanted predictable results. Computers made it possible to track every transaction, every minute of labor, and every second spent on a call.

Customer service gradually moved from being a relationship to being a metric.

The people running those systems were doing what they had been hired and rewarded to do. They reduced staffing, shortened calls, increased throughput, and moved customers toward self-service. The numbers improved.

What was harder to measure was what disappeared along the way. Trust, patience, loyalty, and the sense that someone inside the company actually cared whether the problem was solved.

A call can be completed quickly without resolving anything. A store can reduce payroll while increasing the time customers spend waiting. An automated system can prevent thousands of people from reaching an employee while failing to help them. On a spreadsheet, the operation may appear more efficient. From the customer’s side, nothing has improved.

Perhaps customer service did not disappear. It was converted into data.

Once that happened, the goal was no longer necessarily to serve the customer well. The goal was to produce a number that suggested the customer had been served.

Customers participated in this change too. We rewarded lower prices, longer hours, faster transactions, greater convenience, and the ability to do more without speaking to anyone. At first, self-service often felt like freedom. The weakness only became obvious when something fell outside the routine.

Then we discovered that the lower price was sometimes purchased with our own time.

Perhaps inexpensive products and services are not always as inexpensive as they appear. Part of the price may be paid in waiting, repetition, frustration, and the hours required to reach someone with the authority to help.

I am not sure most people accept poor service because they believe it is good. More likely, we have accepted it because it has become common. When every phone company, bank, retailer, insurer, and government office operates in roughly the same way, changing providers may amount to little more than changing queues.

That still leaves us with some responsibility.

Price matters. Convenience matters. But so does the time we spend waiting, the frustration we carry away, and the experience of being treated as though our presence is an interruption rather than the reason the business exists.

There are still companies that answer the phone, staff the counter, solve unusual problems, and behave as though customers are important. Their prices may not always be the lowest, but perhaps the difference is not simply a premium. It may be the cost of employing enough people, giving them authority, and allowing service to remain human.

In my own photography business, customer service is not something added after the work is complete. It is part of the work. Listening, understanding, responding, and solving unexpected problems are part of what the client is paying for. The photograph may be the visible result, but the experience is part of its value.

If we say customer service matters but continue to reward businesses that eliminate it, the numbers will continue to make the decision for us.

What might change if we valued our time and experience enough to support the businesses that still walk the talk?