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Every phone menu system ever:

1. Greeting message in two languages, explaining which numbers to press for English and Spanish
2. Please listen carefully as our options have recently changed
3. Press 1 for a long pre-recorded message containing only shit nobody cares about, followed by "Thank you, goodbye!" and a hangup
4. Press 2 for a long pre-recorded message containing only shit nobody cares about, followed by "Thank you, goodbye!" and a hangup
5. Press 3 for an overlong vocal description of shit I can find out through the Web site, which I have already consulted prior to calling, followed by Goodbye/hangup
6. Press 4 for options that don't apply to anyone in any reasonable scenario
7. Press 5 for something that seems like it might be useful, but is actually not; Goodbye/hangup, call back
8. Long pause
9. Or press zero (or pound, or 9) to speak with a representative
10. After pressing the only valid option -- 0/#/9/whatever to get to a human being -- a prerecorded message is played, asking me if I know that the Web site can answer most of my questions, including a URL and directions on how to use the Web site
11. All of our representatives are currently assisting other customers. Your call is important to us. Your wait time is approximately {wildly incorrect estimate}

Let's get one thing straight, bucko: If my call were important to you, you would not have just tried to get rid of me through a phone menu.

My favorite variant is American Express, which is entirely voice-operated (except for the card number entering question, which is optionally touch-tone). Despite the fact that I speak clearly and have no discernible accent, the system can never understand what I am saying. However, I have discovered that yelling "FUCK YOU" into the phone when asked for which options you want to choose will forward you to a representative without further questions. Apparently it knows when you're pissed off, and what you want when this occurs.

Alright, look. I know about your fucking useless Web site because that's where I got the phone number to call. Where the hell else would I get the number from? Do you think that I have time-travelled from 1990 and therefore do not go to the Web as my initial method of solving any and all problems? I am not a moron. For this reason, I think every company should have a non-moron, direct-to-representative phone number cleverly posted in a way that only non-morons would see. Phone menus are designed for the lowest common denominator -- the stupidest people imaginable -- so the rest of the above-100 IQ customer base must suffer through narrative designed to boot people out of the call center.

I wish the useless Web site weren't useless. Who thinks up these FAQs and support question trees? Yes it is plugged in and turned on and I have read the fucking manual. I'm here because I have a problem not covered in the manual and therefore not anticipated by the company, so what right do you have to call them Frequently Asked Questions? If these questions were asked frequently, you should have written better instructions or made your UI more user friendly so that I never had to ask them in the first place. And what research is that assessment based on? I'd bet a million to one that that the MOST frequently asked question is "What is the phone number for customer service?" yet I have never seen that covered in a FAQ. Every question and answer in a typical FAQ is some derivative of:

Q: My head is up my ass. What do I do?
A: Gently remove it and continue enjoying our product!

Imagine what an industry-changing breakthrough it would be to have a FAQ actually composed of evidence-based frequently asked questions. Imagine the revolution in customer service if the phone system wasn't stuck in the 20th century and actually focused on helping customers solve problems instead of punting them or making them wait.

These insipid phone menus have taught me that companies see customer service as a huge pain in the ass that they don't want to deal with. It's like warranty fulfillment and taxes and regulation compliance -- it's something to try to avoid, get out of, and reduce if at all possible. Money-pits to walk around. It makes me feel like I'm some kind of bad guy for having to call up and talk to someone, and as a result, I avoid it as often as possible. I now see customer service as a small battle between the corporate machine that takes money and offers minimal service, and the little guy with a problem that the company does not want to solve; if they wanted to solve it, they'd do it through their Web site and make it easy on customers.

This is the result of paying for the physical "product" and getting support and service as a "value-add." The sale of the product makes money, and the service and support increase overhead costs, so in a perfect world, the company would just sell products and successfully punt or divert all customer support requests so that the costs associated with service can be cut.

But what happens if you invert the process? What happens when your "product" is service and support, and the physical item is free? This business model is such a small part of the market at large that it forces you to make customer education your primary business challenge. I came to this realization because recently I was asked to (theoretically) think about how to prove the value of phone and email support to customers whose primary "product" that they pay for is support and service. If the physical item is free and you sell customer service instead, it had better be the best customer service in the whole industry. There are instances where customers need initial help in installation and configuration, then never contact the company again and end up cancelling their support contract because they don't find value in it once everything's working. This is short-sighted, of course, because if there's a third-party hardware failure or change in infrastructure that causes problems with the software (or it has to be reconfigured to work with new technologies), then your production environment is down and it's your fault for not being able to fix it with a high-priority support request. In this instance, the majority of the physical product corporate world has tainted the customer base with hidden phone numbers, idiot phone reps who know nothing and can only apologize and redirect you to the next level, "designed to punt" phone menus, nonsensical support Web pages, and horrible documentation.

So the challenge, as I said above, is to teach service-model customers that they are not being a pain in the ass by emailing or calling support (and there is no phone menu! You talk to a real human being), that the support department will gladly help them or direct them to excellent documentation or, if their needs are more basic, to the training department where they can purchase classroom time with an expert or, if their needs are more advanced, to the services department to purchase a consulting engagement with a highly-trained professional. And all of this stuff has to be top-notch, so you cannot have any of these programs be developed or managed by people who come from the other side of the industry, where the "pain in the ass customer" philosophy keeps the business in the black. Management of this inverted business model is a special challenge unto itself, and involves a certain degree of faith in the process.

So back to the question: How would I prove the value of paid support and/or service? This would be my approach:

• Ask the sales manager to ensure that all sales personnel create a positive first-impression on prospects regarding contacting the company. Nobody should ever feel like they are being a pain in the ass for calling.
• If there is a phone menu system, kill it. If it's at all possible, use fire to kill it. In fact, best nuke it from orbit, just to make sure.
• Tell the marketing droids to make it publicly known that we don't use a phone menu, and that a human being will answer the phone, if available. Perhaps encourage them to use a video of you killing your phone menu system with fire.
• Set up a voicemail system to catch missed calls; make the message as short as possible and promise callers that their call will be returned as soon as possible. And mean it!
• Designate a customer liason team to keep contact with customers up to the customer's comfort level. Some people do not want to be called every month, some might like that level of attention. It might be a good idea to establish this during the sales process.
• In addition to the previous point, act like a drug company rep as budget allows. Take high-dollar customers out to lunch, offer them a vacation package that takes them to the area of the corporate office so you can talk to them and give them a tour. Send them cool stuff on special occasions. Give them gifts, within an affordable budget.
• Train support personnel to act like customer calls and emails are affirmations of the business model. Most support people are going to come from an environment where customer contact is poison -- it adds to overhead and reduces profits. Get this out of their heads.
• Make the price non-negotiable. This instills in customers the fact that the service has a solid and unassailable value. Never offer a deal on the price of service. Add more to the service, give gifts and perks, but do not reduce the price. This is a psychological ploy to teach customers that the service is worth what they are paying, and it will encourage them to interact more with the company in order to take advantage of the value.
• Align commodity product development, UI design, and documentation to make company interaction mandatory. Prove that the service has value, and that the necessities are readily available and competent. Since you are selling the service instead of the commodity product, you must prove the usefulness of the service, not the commodity product. This is tough to do without making the commodity product look like it sucks. There's definitely a delicate balance here.
• If there are "users" and "administrators," then design the commodity product such that people who don't interact with the company have an easy time using it. Users should love it, and admins should love the fact that they can get expert help to implement it.

Unfortunately, this is almost an abandoned business model and I will probably never be able to test my theories. Similarly, though, the pure product model seems to be fading away as well. The trend appears to be toward selling hardware or software plus a required service component. A different battle for a different day.

Recently a shitload of people cancelled their Netflix subscriptions. I was one of them. Upon making that choice, Netflix asked me to explain why I was leaving and what they could do better via a multiple choice survey. Unfortunately, my chief reason for cancelling wasn't part of the survey, and I'm a little bothered by the fact that Netflix will be misled about my departure. So I'm going to explain it here in the unlikely event that anyone gives a damn.

Up until the infamous price hike, Netflix did everything right. They had support for the Nintendo Wii when I had one, and the Playstation 3 when I switched to that system. I saw a ton of movies that I'd been meaning to see for a long time, and discovered a few films that I would probably not have heard of otherwise. Overall I was very happy about the service and considered it a bargain.

I had a "one DVD at a time" Netflix subscription with the Blu-Ray add-on service. I did stream some shows and movies over the course of my subscription, but I was extremely displeased with the availability of content (especially when I could find the show through the search function, but then when I went to play it I was told it was not available). I felt that the streaming service was nice to have, but unnecessary. I was very happy with the disc-by-mail service. I paid good money for a fancy HD home entertainment system and I prefer to use it to its full ability when watching movies. The cheapest way to do that is to get a disc-by-mail service with Blu-Ray support.

If I was so happy with the service, why did I cancel? I can't even give a solid answer, other than, "The company seems unstable, they've made a lot of bizarre choices lately, and I don't trust them." Thinking about it a little more deeply, I cancelled after approximately two years of service because:

• Each month for the past three months, something the company has announced has upset me. Raising prices for the streaming service I rarely use, forcing me to choose a new level of service to avoid the price increase, isolating the disc-by-mail service. Only reason I didn't cancel sooner was, these announcements always came a few days after I'd been billed for the month, and when my billing cycle came due, they either did something to make up for it or I forgot to cancel.
• Being too wishy-washy. Splitting out the disc service, changing their mind, raising prices and thumbing their nose at subscribers, then apologizing when it was evident that more people would cancel than they thought. The organization is poorly managed. I had no clue what new shitty announcement would come from Netflix this month.
• Blockbuster sent me a month of disc-by-mail service for free, and it was about the same price as Netflix, but with better selection.

If Netflix had said, "We're raising prices but delivering higher-quality streaming or a much wider selection," then I might have accepted it because I'd be getting more for my money. But I was actually getting less because Starz backed out of Netflix around the time of the price hike. I didn't even watch any Starz content, but the fact that less was available to me for a higher cost really stuck with me. I sort of said, "No, fuck you for making me pay extra," even though the price actually got cheaper because I removed the streaming option and there was ultimately no change to my disc-by-mail service.

I could have afforded the marginal price increase without any trouble. But I cancelled because there was something about it that offended me on principle. I'm not even sure what it was, exactly, but I would have actually paid more for identical service through Blockbuster simply because Netflix offended me.

Even if I were an over-principled bastard in making this choice, I'm sure there are more people like me who were part of the exodus. I don't think the majority of cancellations happened for that reason, though, and I also don't think Netflix' mass cancellations are because people are unwilling to pay the extra money. I think it's more because, due to economic difficulties or the allure of competing services, it was already on their mind as an unnecessary expense or inferior service, and the price hike simply sealed the deal. The sturm-und-drang of the announcement made subscribers think critically about the service. We all just paid automatically and used it as we pleased, but suddenly, with a price increase of some kind (any kind), we were forced to really evaluate what we were getting for our money. It could have been a ten cent increase and the result would have been the same. There is a definite lesson in business psychology here, but I don't know exactly what it is.