Here’s a piece of advice from an actual business newsletter:



Is your switchboard necessary? By installing a $16,000 24-hour phone-routing system, Paxar, a $74-million Pearl River, N.Y.-based label manufacturer, replaced its two part-time receptionists, who worked 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday. Savings: $4,000 a year.



Holy cow! $4,000 saved. That’s about 5 one-thousanths of 1 percent of the company’s gross revenue. We hope the genius who suggested this was also forced to figure out how much business the company lost, how many customers it angered and how much time it forced its customers to waste wading through its new phone tree system.

We’re constantly amazed at companies that spend millions trying to get new customers, then throw away opportunities to talk to their existing customers on the telephone.

A Sun Journal story Sunday found it took nearly eight minutes to get a human being on the telephone at the Dish Network and nearly seven minutes at Adelphia. Dell computers took about two-and-a-half minutes, while the federal Medicare “Hotline” took about 12 minutes – now that’s customer service for you. They must figure elderly people have nothing better to do.

And that’s really at the bottom of this maddening fact of modern life: Too many firms we deal with value their time and not yours.

Sure, a few bucks can be saved by dumping the switchboard operator and turning the job over to a computer.

The switchboard operator could put your call through to the right person in a matter of seconds. Instead companies today think nothing of having you spend five, six, seven or eight minutes sorting through their push-button calling tree. And, make a mistake along the way, and you may be forced to repeat the frustrating exercise.

Technology has simply allowed large companies to shift the work of the switchboard operator to you – what was once their expense is now yours.

Which is, we find, another great reason to shop locally when you can. That’s where you will have the best chance of getting a human being on the telephone.

You can quickly get a person at L.L. Bean and our local hospitals in seconds, not minutes.

Or you can visit the Web site gethuman.com, which is devoted to trading tricks for outwitting phone trees operated by large organizations.

Some day, we hope, all companies will see the wisdom of L.L. Bean’s corporate philosophy: “We have made a business decision to keep that customer contact,” a spokesman for the Freeport-based retailer told us. “The customer relationship has been at the core of the company for decades.”

Yes, many firms mouth those same words in their advertising and corporate mission statements. L.L. Bean backs them up.