If it's one thing a startup has made me feel, it's utter disdain for large lumbering organizations. I understand why they exist, and I know it may well never change. There's just so much inefficiency, and it may well never go away because at the end of the day, I probably won't switch [my car insurance / my health insurance / my health care provider / my internet provider] JUST because of customer service. Hell, we want to minimize the amount of exposure we get to those bastards. Why do companies require you to wade through phone trees? It's probably one of the more disrespectful and absurd things in customer service. "Your business is important to us." If it was that important, I'd be speaking to a human now. What's even more infuriating is when you have to speak to the machine and it doesn't actually understand anything. I usually end up screaming my head off into my phone. I know it doesn't hurt the computer's feelings, but it sure does make me feel better. It's proven. Back at Stanford I did research with Prof. Clifford Nass. His entire career is based on the sheer fact that people treat computers like people. Now if only large companies would treat people like people, instead of like computers, then maybe we'd be on to something.