Dial one for usability

The telephone is one of the greatest and most straightforward inventions in human history. A human, who wishes to talk to another human but unable to do so in person due a great distance between them, be that his mother, his friend or a representative of his insurance company, picks up the phone, dials a number, waits till the other person answers and talks. As simple as that, end of story.

During the years the telephone has somehow become a device most people really hate. I mostly blame operators, handset manufacturers and providers of added services, namely the industry people who only care for their own pockets way before the well being of their customers.

Let me give you an example of what I am talking about. Suppose you want to call a customer service of whatever company you need to receive service from. Here is how this should happen.

You pick up the phone and dial the number, after exactly one ring, the system answers and informs you of the average waiting time for this service. If you dial from the recognized phone the system addresses you by name, otherwise it just politely calls you "Dear customer" and asks you to enter the number you wish to be reached at. After that you are free to hang up. This is it.

After the time stated by the system is up, your phone rings. The human representative of the company is on the line, with all your information right in front of him, ready to be at your service without any additional delay.

Attention, you did not wait on the line listening to a bunch of crap all the time, they had enough time to pull your data, if for some reason you can not take the call at that time, you can just hang up and try the same later. If for whatever reason, the call is disconnected, the system knows who was the last person you were talking to and it will call you back. Everyone is happy, and you know what, if that company is so cheap that it does not want to pay for the call, I am sure you could work out some arrangement so that you will be charged with the operator fees, you would pay them anyway.

Even if for some reason, you do not agree with me that this is the best possible solution, and indeed I did not provide answers to all questions in this short post, you should at least acknowledge that this is a possible one. How many systems you know that work like that? None. If you do please tell me about them.

Now it's time to wake up, the dream is over, back to endless cyclic menus, annoying commercials, battery life screwed by endless waiting online for the people that are kind enough to give you the service you have already payed for. Good morning everyone.