Sometimes I wonder if the companies and brands really understand what it means when they don't seem to listen and just keep repeating the same thing over and over again. A recent example could be my interaction with these folks. Someone is surely not reading the content and just responding for politeness's sake.

An even recent example would be the conversation with the Airtel Digital TV folks I had yesterday. All I needed was to check up why it was taking more than 4 days to add a channel to my package inspite of using approved text messages and, while I was at it, I needed to add two more channels. It took me a sum total of 25 minutes with 15 of them "on hold" listening to either "your call is very important to us" or, the funky hold music. The problem that I see is that if you are telling for 10 minutes that "your call is very important to us" and yet not putting a human on the other end, then you have an issue with how important the call is. And, repeating that mantra time and time again without actually demonstrating to the customer (remember this is a phone - the customer has no way of knowing whether you've just put him/her on hold and decided to trim your moustache/file your nails) that there are events happening is a bad way of handling calls.

Providing the customer with an option to disconnect the call with an option for a charged call back might actually be something that is preferable than being on hold watching paint dry.