I HAVE SAID this before; I have pointed out the economics of queues; I have drawn attention to the fact that your time, as far as businesses are concerned, is worth absolutely nothing.
Thing is see, in the ideal business, in the businesses of Utopia, there would be no customers. Nope, not one. We are a bloody nuisance; we demand service, if the business sells things we come in and mess up their neatly merchandised shelves while buying stuff, so they have to flippen re-order more stock, which is really inconvenient; we ask awkward questions and want stupid information, and worst of all the business has to hire staff, can you believe it, just to serve us.
Because customers are such a nuisance, as little as possible is spent on hiring staff to attend to us. This is where the economics of employment crops up, and I understand it has to be controlled because staff costs are one of businesses’ biggest expenses (after paying for the directors’ skiing holidays in Switzerland).
Now, what you don’t want if you’re a boss, and you’re paying staff to work, say, eight hours a day, what you don’t want is staff twiddling their thumbs between customers. It’s bad enough that staff want a pee break, and a tea break and a lunch break, let alone an annual holiday, but staff twiddling their thumbs, idle staff, staff with a minute to think between serving customers are enough to make boards of directors uncontrollably shudder in their Jacuzzis.
Bosses pay staff to work eight hours; if staff is at any time idle during that time, then they’re actually being paid for doing nothing. This possibility has been known to rock stock exchanges, and is therefore avoided by implementing a fundamental principle of customer management.
This principle is: “Always have less staff than is required”.
Supermarkets, airline check-in queues, home affairs (in fact all government offices), post offices, fast food take-aways, banks (especially banks), shops, licencing departments, tollgates, .. all businesses do it; they have less staff than required.
Of course, what does this mean? It means queues. By ensuring that there is a queue bosses are ensuring that their staff is occupied all the time and are never paid for doing nothing. It might cost the customers time and possibly money, but at least it’s not costing the shareholders a single cent.
So, when the bank teller, for example, finishes with the one customer, and looks up, there’s the next one walking up to the counter. This is called PRO-DUCT-IV -ITY, yep productivity, and bosses applaud it, bosses worship it, conveniently forgetting that it has been obtained at the expense of the customers’ time (and possibly money).
I suspected it, but I learned on Friday last week that the same principle applies to customer service lines that you phone into. I once phoned one of these service lines, and in that case a recorded voice told me at the start that my call was 154th in the queue, and that I could expect it to be answered in seven weeks. So I didn’t bother.
On Friday, I HAD to speak to someone. I had no choice, they had me by the short and curlies. Boy, did they have me by the short and curlies!
They didn’t tell me where I was in the queue; I hung on in this telephonic queue for 46 minutes and six seconds. Then gave up.
During that time I was periodically told by a recorded voice, “Please hold on for a moment”, and “Just to let you know, we value your time”, which was obviously bulls*it. They didn’t give a damn about my time. But I HAD to speak to them, which was why I hung on and waited. I thought, maybe they’ll answer just seconds after I hang up (or hang myself in frustration).
And the bosses of that company had not only kept human beings to a minimum with a limited number of consultants to eventually take calls, but had replaced the switchboard operator with a recorded voice, which had the nerve to tell me that the call was recorded for “quality purposes”. It said:
“Welcome to the Waste Your Time Hotline. For quality purposes, please note that your call is being recorded.
“To drive yourself mad, press 1;
“For us to drive you mad, press 2;
“If you are already mad, press 3;
“If you actually think we give a damn, press 4.”
So I pressed 4. Then it said:
“If you’d rather speak to a human, press 1;
“If you’d rather speak to a giraffe, press 2;
“For Alcoholics Anonymous, press 3;
“If you think we give a damn, press 4.”
So, ever the optimist, I pressed 4. Then it said:
“If you’re biting your nails, press 1;
“If you’re pulling your hair out, press 2;
“If you’re grinding your teeth, press 3;
“If you think we give a damn, press 4.”
So, with faith in the goodness of man, I pressed 4, and waited for 46 minutes and 6 seconds.
I dunno, between you and me I don’t think the business I was calling valued my time at all. I think that businesses that say in their advertising blurb, “We put our customers first”, are talking a crock of horse manure.
