Voices We Hear

“Sorry! All our customer care executives are busy attending other calls… your call is important to us… please hold the line… your call will be attended in approximately… Seven… minutes… Fifty-three… seconds…”

So that’s nearly 8 minutes added on to the 4-odd minutes I’ve spent entering banal numbers, and information as instructed by a different voice.
Cutting-edge technology, they call it!
As the metallic voice squawks in my ear, I resign myself to a long, tiring and fruitless wait. My problem is simple: over two weeks ago, I followed the instructions given me by a voice at the other end of a phone line, and tendered in a request for a change of communication address.
Two weeks… and nothing.
I just want to find out what happened… and so I wait.
An inane, tuneless, drone fills the eardrum positioned next to my phone’s speaker. After a while, my brain recognizes it as a lame -- and failed -- attempt to recreate Beethoven’s 5th Symphony.
For my listening pleasure, no doubt. But if it’s meant to be soothing, it’s failing… miserably!
The metallic voice comes back, rudely cutting into the third movement. Beethoven would turn in his grave, I think, as the voice assures me monotonously that I’m a valued customer… and with a twang of triumph, relays that I have now just 6 minutes and 45 seconds to wait.
Am I supposed to be ecstatic? I wonder.
And as Beethoven’s genius filters through again, a thought strikes me:
This company has a misplaced sense of pride. It sounds happy that it has the technology to calculate how long it will take for my call to be answered.
But shouldn’t it be ashamed that it’s making me wait?
Shouldn’t pride come from an immediate response?
Won’t that be a declaration that there are fewer irate customers calling with problems?
Won’t that also indicate that whatever the problem, it’s not severe, and is being solved in the flash of an eye?
It’s all about Customer Care… the customer’s the only one that cares.