Customer Care

At work I often deal with automated help lines, be they tech support or sales, and I find few things quite as maddening. Sometimes I speculate what is it about them that bothers me so much. Part of it I think is that the voices, be they male or female, tend to be somewhat monotone, which almost immediately put me on edge. That’s not the main irritant, but it does feed the flames. And there’s the sense of powerlessness in that you know exactly what is going to come next, which is a seemingly endless list of options–delivered in the same monotone–and you can’t do a thing about it.

And it goes without saying that whatever the purpose is that you’re calling for, it’s going to be the last option presented. So you have to sit for what feels like an eternity till you option comes up.

In my book Fed Ex is has almost made this form of torture–I mean “enhanced interrogation” an art form.

This is why the latest commercial from Apple particularly resonates with me. It’s titled ‘Customer Care’ and it’s the only commercial I have seen that knows what that feeling is like.