Much ado about nothing?

This weekend I spent about one hour on the phone with three customer service agents. Here's why:

I have a product that I had bought from a well-known Indian company about eight years ago. It is a long-term product and offers online access. I needed to update my mobile phone number to be able to use some of its online access features. However, as I discovered this weekend, the only way to change that number is by going to one of their stores in India.

The first time I called customer service, they told me that I needed a specific piece of information to confirm my identity. Once they had that information, they could help me change my number over the phone. The second time when I called back with that information, the agent told me that I was missing another key piece. The same thing happened when I called the third time. And this is when I got angry and started to tell the agent that transacting with his company was a horrible experience. And that I would end the relationship as soon as I could. As he read me the company line of 'we need this information to make sure you are our client', I hung up the phone on him.

When my husband tried to ask me what had happened, I asked him to give me a few moments to calm down. I felt fine in a little while but still had some things to say about how poor the experience was.

Later that day, all of a sudden, I remembered my sister's recent adventure as she tried to get her passport renewed in time for a conference abroad. The process started with her trying to get an appointment via a website that opened up only for 15minutes every day. Once she had the elusive appointment in hand, she stood in a day-long queue at an Indian passport service centre. The next step is that the police come by to verify proof of residence. When a month went by and there was no sign of the police and her travel dates were drawing near, my sister went to the police station. This set into motion the 'workings' of a flawed system. The entire police 'thana' seemed to be in on this and began to send her from one office to another in every day. As another month drew to a close, my sister met a senior bureaucrat who was shocked to hear about the whole experience. And who had the power to make things happen.

Within two weeks of this officer coming into the picture, my sister received her passport. An effort that cost her over a month's work and endless agony. And all through this, she did not let her frustration take over.

I thought about this as I reflected on my frustration with the customer service agent. All I had done was spend about an hour on the phone and I was so upset with the company's inefficiency. On the other hand, my sister had survived a very unpleasant ordeal with much less ado.  

Maybe I have become too used to systems that work. And maybe that isn't always such a good thing. Maybe difficult experiences and difficult people teach you to cope and adapt better. And maybe that's a lesson I should remember more often.