You throw back the covers. Stumble to the bathroom. Grab a fresh roll of Charmin. There it is. Squeeze out a blob of Crest. There it is again. Hmm.
Shuffle down the stairs. Yank open the fridge. Grope around for the Folger`s, the Shedd`s Spread Country Crock, the Alpo Beef & Liver Dinner.
(You`re not the only one who`s hungry.)
There it is in triplicate. Hmm. Hmm. Hmm.
You start keeping track. All day. There it is on the Kellogg`s Corn Flakes, the Duncan Hines blueberry muffin mix, the Sunlight dishwashing liquid, the Spirit 3 Soaps in One, the Q-Tips, the Mop & Glo, the O-Cedar Light & Thirsty Wet Mop, the Renuzit RoomMate, the Oscar Mayer Bun-Length hot dogs, the Oreos, the Green Giant Harvest Fresh spinach, the Ragu Chicken Tonight, the Haagen-Dazs vanilla caramel & peanut brittle bar and finally, before you retreat back to those covers and the womb of sleep that shields you from this increasingly curious world, you see that even Orville has succumbed. There it is on Mr. Redenbacher`s microwave popping corn: 1-800 . . .
Near mad, you scramble up the stairs and leap between the sheets. ”Dear God,” you start to pray, hoping for relief. You do not want 1-800 dreams. But then you stop. You wonder if the only way to reach him anymore is 1-800-BESEECH.
As Democratic presidential candidate Jerry Brown gladly will remind you-any and every time you give him a sound bite-ours has become a 1-800 world.
”Questions? Comments? Call 1-800 . . .”
It`s everywhere.
Acthe folks at AT&T who count such things. When 1-800 service was introduced in 1967, just over 7 million calls were made the first year. In 1991, America`s fingers dialed 1-800 more than 10.2 billion times.
The toll-free digits, offering instant H-E-L-P from the comfort of your very own castle, originally popped up on big-ticket-potentially-big-head ache gizmos: the refrigerators, washers and air conditioners of Whirlpool, the first U.S. company to slap 1-800 on its labels and offer round-the-clock, over-the-wire handholding to customers who could not, for the life of them, find the doggone off button. Throughout the `60s and `70s, car companies, airlines, investment firms, even the IRS joined the 1-800 lines.
But in the last decade, the little number has bumped its way onto just about every little label you bring into your house. An industry survey shows that about 10,000 products in the average supermarket come complete with a toll-free tag. (The average length of a 1-800 call is 6 minutes, so if you started now and dialed every 1-800 number lurking on your grocery store shelves, you would be on the phone for roughly the next 42 days.)
Our question is: What in the world could you possibly ask about, say, Charmin bathroom tissue? Would anyone actually call long distance to ask a stranger something as silly as, ”Which way does the roll go-over or under?” Actually, yes.
”We get a lot of calls from bars, `What is the proper way to put Charmin on the roll, over or under?` ” reported Joan Kimble, the pleasant voice on the other end of 1-800-543-0480, where 200 consumer agents at Procter & Gamble`s glass tower in downtown Cincinnati field an average of 8,000 calls a day, each 1-800 agent an encyclopedia on subjects ranging from Crisco to Mr. Clean to Charmin.
”The answer,” said Kimble (we knew you were dying to know), ”there is no proper way.”
A mystery solved
In Battle Creek, Mich., ”Why is Tony the Tiger`s nose blue?” is the question that, at one time or another, has stumped almost every one of the 40- plus agents who pick up Kellogg`s 1-800-962-1413 phones.
Since Kellogg`s went 1-800 in January 1991, the Nos. 1 and 2 best questions, according to those who get the best and the worst of them: ”Why do Rice Krispies snap, crackle and pop?” and ”What is Tony the Tiger`s secret formula?”
The answers: ”Snap, crackle, pop, that`s a complicated answer,” said Linda Pell, Kellogg`s manager of consumer affairs. Here goes: ”When you puff rice, it fills with air and when you add milk, the milk is absorbed irregularly and the starch structure starts to swell and it pops the air bubble. So you get your snap, crackle and pop.
”Tony`s secret, we`re sorry, that`s confidential,” she said, letting us down easy.
When the phones rang early one morning a few weeks back at Drackett Co. in Cincinnati, JoAnn Margeson thought she`d hooked a live one when the man who`d dialed 1-800-632-1684 asked: ”Is Vinegar Windex harmful to reptiles?” ”I was sure it was a prank call, but it was around breakfast,” not prime time for yucksters, Margeson said. ”It turned out he has lizards, which he sprays with water each morning. He mistook the Windex for his water bottle. After we laughed, I explained the ingredients and assured him there was nothing harmful.”
After a few hours on the 1-800 circuit, you find out America is calling:
– To see if the folks who make Lestoil know how to get squid stains out of the dining room rug.
– To check out what to do when you`ve sprayed your hair with Endust, thinking it was hair spray (or worse, sprayed it on a skillet, thinking it was Pam).
– To find out if, when you`re baking Betty Crocker brownies, you need to follow the high-altitude directions on the back of the box because you live on the 10th floor.
– To learn how to cook that can of Green Giant Niblets Golden Sweet Corn because, for a while there, it wasn`t spelled out on the label. (The directions-essentially, open, pour and heat-are back on the can. After a few too many corn calls, the folks in the Valley realized you cannot underestimate the gross national intelligence.)
Replacing the corner grocer
America, you conclude, must have knocked loose a 1-800 wire. But that`s beside the point. The point is: The numerals are here to stay.
In a world that increasingly does business without so much as a face or even a name, 1-800 has moved in where Ma and Pa Grocer once stood. (Console yourself: at least there`s a voice on the other end of the line. And, because it`s an industrywide criterion for hiring, it`s a pleasant one at that.)
”Used to be you could go to the corner store and say, `Look, I can`t get this pickle jar opened.` And the guy behind the counter said, `I`ll talk to the driver.` It wasn`t necessarily satisfactory, but at least there was someone there,” explains Fredrick Koenig, professor of social psychology at Tulane University in New Orleans and a man who studies the marketplace the way a myrmecologist studies ants.
”Now, you go to the supermarket, you can`t find anybody to talk to. Even the store manager is fairly remote. The 1-800 move is a drift toward personalizing, toward big companies far away saying, `We care.` ”
Case in point: There you are standing in your kitchen on a Saturday night. You panic. Your mother-in-law is coming for supper tomorrow. You can`t find your chicken-and-something recipe from the 1975 Pillsbury Bake-Off. You grab your sack of Pillsbury Best flour, dial 1-800-767-4466. A pleasant-voice recording tells you that, because it`s Saturday night, you can call back during business hours Monday through Friday or, if it`s an emergency, you can dial another number.
You decide it`s an emergency. You dial the other number. Sally Shlosberg, Pillsbury`s vice president of consumer relations and technology services, who is in the middle of serving dinner to her own guests, gets beeped. She calls you back and talks you down. She leafs through her own crusty copy of the Bake-Off cookbook. And, as her own guests linger, she recites: ”One teaspoon salt, one-half cup Pillsbury Best flour . . .”
”Our senior staff shares rotation of beepers and portable phones,”
Shlosberg explains. ”If something is very concerning to a consumer, we want to get back to them immediately.”
And so, all over Minneapolis, beepers have beeped in concert halls and theaters and movie houses, and Pillsbury staff members have whispered apologies, slithered from their seats, pulled their phones from their purses and put in calls to the panicked.
A business necessity
”We do stand behind our product. That`s the whole concept of the 1-800 number,” says Shlosberg, whose company joined the toll-free ranks in 1981, one of the first food firms to do so, and this year expects to answer 400,000 calls.
”It`s like saying: `Here we are. We have nothing to hide.` Companies are shooting themselves in the foot if they don`t have 800 numbers,” says Lauren Basham, director of education and publications for the Society of Consumer Affairs Professionals, an association of more than 3,000 consumer affairs specialists from Fortune 1,000 companies, based in Alexandria, Va.
Ten years ago, back when problems were addressed to ”Dear Sir or Madam,” and a quick response meant a letter back in seven days, the society was conducting seminars on ”How to Answer Complaint Mail.” Now the group is filling the house at its national convention with ”How to Successfully Coach and Train Your Call Center Staff.”
To understand the business of 1-800 numbers in America, the society recently commissioned its third survey of 2,000 U.S. companies to find out how, and whether, they use 1-800. The first study, conducted in 1983, showed that slightly more than one-third of the companies used 1-800 numbers. In 1988, 50 percent did, and, according to the soon-to-be-released 1992 profile, almost two-thirds of those companies have now signed on.
The average number of calls per week for each number more than doubled from 1988 to 1982, jumping to 1,500 from 600. Thirty percent of the calls are complaints, 54 percent are inquiries and the rest are responses to promotional offers or new business, the 1992 survey shows. The No. 1 reason for investing in a 1-800 system, the companies report: increased brand loyalty. No. 2:
classic consumer research; you find out lots by talking to your customers.
The Diaper Lab
What does it pay to listen to the curious, the crazy, the mad and the lonely, eight hours a day, five days a week? The average starting salary is $17,766 a year, according to the survey. And once you`re a master consumer representative-please do not call these people 1-800 operators-the average salary industrywide is $21,884.
Is it worth it?
”You need the patience of Job,” says Pillsbury`s Shlosberg.
”You never know what`s going to be on the other end of the line,” says Carol Taylor, Procter & Gamble`s pleasant voice in charge of the 1-800 food line.
”Some people think you need to start out screaming,” says Kellogg`s Pell.
”Some people think we`re disembodied entities,” says P&G`s Kimble.
If you (a) are Job-like, (b) don`t mind a little surprise whenever you pick up the phone, (c) can stand some ringing in your ears from time to time, and (d) aren`t bothered by the fact that people imagine you without a head, or arms or legs, read on.
This is how it works:
You get hired, in part because you have a pleasant voice (”you know it when you hear it,” explains Kimble), and often because you have a degree in food science or textiles or some other subject that made your mother always ask: ”Where do you think you`ll find a job with that?”
You get trained, for as long as eight weeks at some companies. You learn how to work the phones, how to handle difficult calls (”We`re happy to help. Please do call back when you`re able to talk about this in a more calm way,” is the effective response offered to folks fuming about their flour at Pillsbury), and everything there is to know about the products on your 1-800 line.
At P&G, considered a cutting-edge 1-800 company, you don`t have to have babies but you do have to go to the Diaper Lab if you`re answering phones on the Luvs or Pampers line. Likewise, you don`t need a home economics degree to answer calls on the Duncan Hines 1-800-DHMOIST line, but you do need to spend time in the Culinary Lab to get your hands in the mixing bowl and on the rolling pin. Finally, if you`re assigned to the Tide, Spic and Span or Downy lines, you must put in hours in the Laundry Lab where you learn all about how to use a washing machine, and how to get ketchup off that wedding dress.
Once passed, you get your headsets.
Go ahead, America, 1-800-CALLNOW.
