Searching for a job is hard work. Perhaps the hardest part is the countless hours on the telephone. This directly relates to the vanishing voice of the customer, so please read on…

I recently saw an ad for a position with a telecom service provider for which I would be ideally suited. The ad clearly stated apply on our website. Unfortunately, the job was not posted anywhere on their website, so I called the company. I then entered into the “deaf to the customer zone.” Nobody answered during business hours, so I tried my luck with the dial-by-number directory. The employee mentioned in the job ad was not in the directory. I attempted dialing into the customer service queue. Its greeting began with “Please enter a name. We can only respond to customers who call us by name.”

Allusions to Dante’s circles of hell and the futility expressed by Kafka began to become extremely clear. This was yet another company, whose very product and service proved to be its greatest barrier to customer intimacy. They made themselves deaf to their own customers.