That long check-in line at the airport; the wait at the baggage claim; the utility serviceman who wants a three-hour window for appointments; the sofa delivery from the furniture company; the doctor who has patients stacked up in rooms, undressed, while he sees others; the wait for the insurance reimbursement. What’s going on?

What is becoming obvious is that while businesses are devising all sort of ways to save company time and money, it generally is at the expense of the customer. Amazing technology has been devised to speed things up, yet maybe that’s the very reason many businesses have gone in the opposite direction in their dealings with their customers. Probably the cost cutters can tell down to the minute, even the second, what it costs the company to handle various transactions. They have multiplied the time it takes to complete a given transaction by the average pay of an employee for the corresponding time, added the number of times that transaction is performed, and come up with the cost. And if they can cut out an employee involvement in that transaction, or better yet, eliminate the transaction altogether, well, there’s the saving. But who is calculating the value of the customer’s time and involvement? How did we get to the point where the company’s time is more valuable than the customer’s?

You may feel that you never waste your customer’s time. Consider this: do you ever advertise an item, then have a customer come in to see it, only to be told it is sold out? Did you waste her time, because you elected to be conservative and place a too-small order, rather than risk having any merchandise left after the promotion? And consider this: you don’t like to buy a full range of sizes, so skip a few in each style. You have put this new style on display in your store, and the customer loves it. You didn’t buy her size. “But we can special order it for you.” Is that not a waste of her time?

And consider this: a customer calls your company on what turns out to be