I just had my umpteenth experience with dealing with a company that (apparently) has no telephones.  

The company I am talking about is a start-up airline that claims to have the “lowest cost” of any airline in the history of mankind.  Apparently, one of the ways they accomplished this is by cutting out administrative personnel and telephones altogether!  

Why, you ask?  Excellent question.  I can tell you that there is no greater frustration than trying to reach a company executive only to find out that your only recourse is email.  Those of you who know me well know how I feel about email.  It’s time-consuming, often it causes more confusion than it creates, and words themselves are simply inadequate to express certain points.  

I’m specifically trying to reach this company so that I can get their CEO to be a guest on my talk show.  When we found out that we could not reach him by telephone we sent him an email explaining our market ... the vast majority of whom own their own business. (I didn’t think it would be necessary to point out to him that business travelers are a coveted marketplace.)

This was maybe a month ago.  Since then, we have regularly sent emails, only to learn that they fall into “black-holes,” never to be seen (or heard!) from again.  

Most of us have had this same experience with customer service.  We try over and over and over to reach someone inside of the company who can hear our customer service-related tales of woe only to be told that you must send an email instead.  And of course, emails, when sent, result almost exclusively in “form” emails right back to us.  (This is what I call the “holding” emails ... the one that is designed to buy the company 2 to 4 weeks of time while they either procrastinate or someone actually is charged with the responsibility of responding to your message.)  

Also, the “holding” email is highly effective when the customer finally does get through (customers can be ingenious as well) ... “Just a minute sir, my records show that we indeed emailed you back on January 14, 2005.”  

Telephone companies, EBay and virtually all other catalogue-type firms are notorious for this method of doing business.  And until recently, so were Amazon and NetFlix.

I don’t know.  It must work, because more and more companies are doing it.

But I liken this to just a gentle warring down of the will of the customer.  The company figures that in time, and if they weather the storm, eventually consumers will forget those days when there actually was customer service.  That’s the same day that we will go kicking and screaming into the next decade of doing business without people.  

I never thought I’d see the day.