Your Call is Important to Us: The Tragicomedy of Customer Service

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My simple-hearted friend Swami was in a restless mood the other day when we met over coffee.

““कृपया प्रतीक्षा करें, आप कतार में हैं” – isn’t that what they said, when you called customer service numbers in those days?” he asked us.

“Some of them said ‘Please wait. You are in queue’,” my wise friend Jigneshbhai replied.

“It was tough but at least that was honest. You called and waited for something to happen. Now it is easy to call but I doubt their honesty. They say, ‘Your Call is Important to Us,’ and you have to make things happen,” Swami said.

I sipped my coffee and waited to hear Swami’s troubles. I could see a smile on Jigneshbhai’s calm face which suggested that he was in for some fun at our friend’s expense.

“Every time I call them now, it starts with – ‘Please listen carefully as our menu options have recently changed’. I have been searching for the change but didn’t find it for a long time”, Swami started telling us about his customer service travails.

“They are telling you please don’t blame us later if you stand in the wrong queue”, remarked Jigneshbhai, tongue in cheek. “Why did you call them so often though?”

“Well, I wanted to speak to someone but never could in the first few calls. That’s when I realized that the thing that has changed is that they removed the ‘Press 0 to talk to our service representative’ link from their menu options”, Swami said, in a tone of confused triumph.

“So, they removed the counter which had people earlier?” Jigneshbhai continued.

Not one to give up, Swami added, “Yes, but I have mastered all their tricks now. A few times I tried all options in their menu to get to an agent. I pressed 0 like I used to earlier. Didn’t work.”

His initial spirit of discovery changed to a mood of disappointment as he was saying that.

“They want to make it tough for stubborn callers like you to reach them,” reiterated Jigneshbhai.

“Exactly,” Swami took it as a compliment rather than as a taunt.

“But finally, I got it. If you want to speak to someone, you do nothing! You wait at the main menu itself – and it will say ‘Transferring your call to a customer service representative,” he informed us with a triumphant smile.

“Great”, I said, giving Swami a break from Jigneshbhai thinking this was the end of it.

But Jigneshbhai poked him further. “You are tenacious. So, finally you got what you wanted?”

Swami’s victorious face got tinged with some anger.

“I wish you were right. I had just got into the queue now. Now they said, “Your waiting time is expected to be 9 minutes. Please hold. Your Call is important to us.”

“Waiting in a queue is nothing new for you. 9 minutes to the counter is easy,” Jigneshbhai said.

“I wish it was,” Swami mused. “Someone came up after some time, and after ‘how may I help you’, asked me my address, date of birth and mother’s maiden name for security reasons.”

“I am sure you had them handy,” Jigneshbhai continued.

“Well, I remembered the first two but could not remember the third,” Swami replied.

“Then? What happened?” Jigneshbhai was not the one to let go easily, too.

“She told me that I have to enter some more details. And on top of it, she asked, ‘Can I put you on hold while I transfer you to the system?’ As if I had a choice.”

“Hmm. I think this is like reaching the counter in the olden times and the agent asking you for a set of documents she needs which you did not have”, remarked Jigneshbhai.

“Yeah – so I entered my account details and then the system asked me for some OTP verification. And then she came back and said, ‘Sir, thank you for your verification. While I pull up your account details, may I place your call on hold?’” Swami said. “Then I started listening to some music for 5 minutes.”

Swami’s sorry tale kept getting sorrier.

“Ok, then what happened?” I asked, trying to give Swami some empathy.

“Finally, she asked me what I wanted,” Swami said with relief.

“Wow. Finally,” Jigneshbhai retorted sipping his coffee.

“I said I wanted to downgrade my account and change my address.” Swami continued. And then in a flabbergasted tone, he added, “I don’t know what happened after that, but for 10 minutes I spoke to three people from three different departments every time the system kept transferring the call and saying, “Your call is important to us”.”

“They kept telling me how a downgrade would be disastrous – for whom I don’t know! They gave me some discounts in my account. And by the time they were done, I forgot why I had decided to downgrade, and I agreed not to change anything!”, reported Swami.

His face showed an emotion that had a now-familiar mix of victory and defeat.

“And what about the address change?” asked Jigneshbhai, almost spurring Swami into anger.

“Nothing, she took down my request and gave me a request number. And told me that it would be effective after I submit my KYC and address proof documents at their branch,” Swami said with a dejected look.

“So that was it?” I asked, trying to close it. I realised that if we took this any further, Swami would have a nervous breakdown. He finally said, “Yeah. She asked ‘is there anything else I can help you with? If not, please rate us after the call. It would be our pleasure to serve you again.’”

As we left after our coffee, Jigneshbhai remarked, “Sometimes I wonder if ‘कृपया प्रतीक्षा करें, आप कतार में हैं’ was better than ‘Your call is important to us’!”

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