I just got shouted at by my phone. It rang. I picked it up and a mad woman started shouting.

‘I am calling to ask you some questions. I am going to ask you three questions. After you have answered these questions I will call you again to follow up with some more questions. You can use your key pad or you can just use our voice activated service to say yes or no…’

Was she a spy or god or mad? Was I? I would have interrupted her to ask her but I quickly realised she was not crazy or secret or divine she was just a recorded rude person. So I politely waited for her to finish her rant which ended with something about Vodafone and ‘service’ and then I quietly said ‘no’ to no-one and put the phone down.

Funny because I just emailed by friend Barbara to say how unhelpful Vodafone had been when I called them up to ask for my iphone upgrade that I thought I was due. Bad service is one thing – I told Barbara because she is not just a friend but the person in our office who handles our accounts – but bad service followed up by offensive pretend person means I’m not even prepared to help them out by telling them how crap their service is – although I am prepared to tell everyone else.

And I’ll just say this. It works best for consumer and brand when help lines actually help people. And rather than investing in services that check whether services are servicing those they serve, brands should just invest more in their people. That way employees might just feel appreciated and empowered and inspired enough to be genuinely, humanly helpful and that would be good all round too.