August 30, 2005 - Ed Waits For No Man

If you were making a list of things that are better today than they were 50 years ago, voice message systems would not be on it. Sure, the systems save corporations billions of dollars. And sometimes, if all you want to do is look at your account balance or see if your payment was received, they can work pretty well. But today, you can do all that stuff on the Internet. So, when you need to reach out and touch someone on the phone, you’re usually pretty sure that there aren’t any menus options on the voice prompt to please you. You called for human intervention, and you will accept no alternative.

Yesterday, the dedicated staff of edhat.com got on the phone to reach live personnel at our local utilities. We called Cox Cable, Southern California Edison, Southern California Gas, and Verizon (with a Z). The moment we were connected with the party to whom we were speaking, we started our dedicated stopwatches and began to navigate the voice prompts. We pressed 1 for English, and we didn’t press número ocho para el español. And, when we were forced to choose something, we said we had a billing question.

In our voice prompt conversation with Cox, we were asked to enter our phone number and the last 4 digits of our social security number before we got the opportunity to dial 0 for operator. At Edison, we were prompted to enter our house number. The Gas Company wanted our account number, but since we didn’t have it, they let us proceed to the next level after a short delay.

We listened to some hold music. At Edison it was easy-listening jazz, kind of like they play while you’re eating brunch. At Verizon, it was Kelly Clarkson singing her hit song “Low”, whose lyrics sounded a little apropos.

“Have you ever been left out in the cold?” sang Ms. Clarkson.

“Have you ever been left on hold?” sang Ed.

Ed had. In fact, it happened yesterday when he galled the Gas Company. After selecting the option to “speak to a representative,” Ed heard a message about the CARE plan for low-income customers, a message about the level-pay plan, and then dead silence. No, “This is Betty can I help you?” No, “Please stay on the line.” No, “All agents are assisting other customers.” No, “Due is a high volume of calls.” No easy-listening jazz. No Kelly Clarkson. No Clay Aikens. Nothing.

Ed stayed on the line for ten minutes listening to nothing (and other things he couldn’t hear) before he ran out of gas (get it?), and hung up.

Out of curiosity (and because he was told), another member of the dedicated staff called up the Gas Company to see if he could duplicate Ed’s experience of being lost in the Bermuda triangle of voice messaging. He pressed 0, listened to the two prerecorded messages, and was connected with a live person right away. Hmm.

The final ranking in our dial-to-live-person survey were Cox Cable (3 minutes, 14 seconds), Verizon (4 minutes, 31 seconds), and SCE (5 minutes, 30 seconds). And, the Gas Company? Well it was infinity the first time, and 2 minutes and 15 seconds the second time. It was unclear how to award today’s prize. A hasty meeting of the Edhat board of directors, concerned citizens, and people we didn’t know determined that the Gas Company was the longest wait based upon their first round figure. For the average time, it was decided that we should take the median time – 5 minutes and a half a second.

The closest guesser was BanMan who wins an Edhat t-shirt and a bottle of FRS-Plus, the new nutrition drink that builds stamina for running races and … waiting on hold.

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