Dead in the Water, US Business

 Customer service call: "We are experiencing abnormally high volume. Please wait. We will answer your call in the order it was received. You may go to our website for frequently asked questions: www.anywhere.com/customer service."

If we were to do a bit of arithmetic, The 31.7 million small businesses in the US must all have a similar customer service policy with only a few exceptions. Say, the average wait time is 20 minutes, and thats optimistic. If customer service has only 2 telephones and two customer service representatives working an 8 hour day while serving 20 customers that total wasted wait time then amounts to 1,233,333 hours and 22 minutes times 20 times 2 every day, which equals 49,333,320 hours. If we were to judge the value of the customers time at a mere $20 an hour, the total wasted productivity equals around 986.7 million dollars. This does not take into account the lost business from customers who just hang up and go elsewhere or just don't do business at all. Nor, does it take into account the multiplying loss of business productivity and velocity during that lost time -- a loss of over a billion dollars a day all total. 

Courtesy, customer service, and efficiency in the past made American business, products and demand far superior to the rest of the world. Middle Class wealth came with it, along with a high standard of living. Thats what progressive means!