You Call This Customer Service? Hello!?

If you missed the great piece in the New York Times Business section on 2/26/06 called “Your Call Should Be Important to Us, But It’s Not,” you can thank Larry Bodine, Tom Kane and now us for bringing it to your attention. The article, by William Taylor, is about the now almost-infamous Paul English, who, “fed up with too many aggravating run-ins with awful customer service,” created a “cheat sheet” for how to break through those awful automated interactive voice-response systems at many large companies. Mr. English not only named names, but he published their codes for reaching a human voice, which the companies themselves do not make public. Do read it, not only because it is a humorous example of someone actually “sticking it to da man,” but for the underlying moral of the tale: Let’s not let this happen in our business.