Customer Service

by Benoît Duteurtre, Bruce Benderson (Translator)

Incorrect password. Try again.

In this devilish satire by one of France's most audacious social commentators, a man gets a state-of-the-art cellphone that, in spite of himself, he falls in love with. It really does seem as if it's going to make his life easier.

Except then he loses it. Luckily, he's a preferred customer, which is supposed to make it easy for him to get a replacement.

And so begins a long, fiendish descent down the rabbit hole known as "customer service." But our hero is determined to stay on the line...to outwit the phone menus...to outwait the hold muzak...to talk to the head of customer service, who wrote to him that all he needed to do was call, and he would be able to get back that time-saving convenience that made his life so much simpler...

The Contemporary Art of the Novella series is designed to highlight work by major authors from around the world. In most instances, as with Imre Kertész, it showcases work never before published; in others, books are reprised that should never have gone out of print. It is intended that the series feature many well-known authors and some exciting new discoveries. And as with the original series, The Art of the Novella, each book is a beautifully packaged and inexpensive volume meant to celebrate the form and its practitioners.

Genres: Fiction, France, Literature

74 pages, Paperback

First published October 9, 2003

About the author

Benoît Duteurtre (20 March 1960 – 16 July 2024) was a French novelist and essayist. He was also a musical critic, musician, producer and host of a radio show about music. He spent his time between Paris, New York and Normandy.

Benoît Duteurtre was born in Sainte-Adresse, Seine-Maritime, Upper Normandy, where he spent his first years. He was the son of Jean-Claude Duteurtre and Marie-Claire Georges. He was also the great-grandson of the French president René Coty. He attended Saint-Joseph, a Catholic educational institution in Le Havre. Duteurtre began to write at an early age. At fifteen, he presented his first texts to Armand Salacrou, a French dramatist established in Le Havre, who encouraged him to pursue his efforts. Le Havre, a heavily destroyed city during World War II and rebuilt in the structural classicism style will often reappear in Duteurtre's later works.

At the age of sixteen, Benoît Duteurtre was fascinated with modern music, especially the work of Pierre Boulez. In 1977, Benoît began musicology studies at the University of Rouen, France. That same year, he met Karlheinz Stockhausen and, a year later, Iannis Xenakis. In 1979, Benoît Duteurtre studied for a month with György Ligeti, whose musical theory later had a strong influence in his life. He graduated with a license in Musicology.

Reviews

[The Crimson Fucker · Rating 4 out of 5]

The other night I was at the DT window in my job… and a lady asked me what was the difference between 6 different items that have the word “nachos” on them… at firsts I thought she was confused and I ask her to be more specific and to tell me the 2 items she wanted to hear the difference… and she said on her bitchy voice “all of them…” this is the part of the history when the bitch realizes too fucking late with what kind of nut case she dealing… 45 seconds later when I finished telling her every single ingredient on each and everyone of the mother fucking nachos all she could say was: “I guess I asked for it” and them proceeded to order something else… every time I have to deal with this dumb fucks I ask my self WHY GOOGLE? WHY ME??? WHY SO MANY RETARDS!!!!??? WHY????!!! That was what was going on inside my sick, afro covered head when I was reading this… all I could see is these dude who acts like he is smarter than the dumb people trying to help him but can’t do nothing against the rules their employers set… and then something “funny” happened now keep in mind that I’m a sick/twisted individual… I am Alfonso, The One That Laugh At Things That Ain’t Funny! This 3 dumb bitches were sitting in 2 of the chairs in front of me… now you may notice that there are only 2 chairs in the last preposition but 3 dumb bitches sitting in there… how could this be you may ask yourself… well simple dumb bitch #1 was sitting on the chair on the left dumb bitch #2 was sitting on the one in the right, and DUMB as fuck bitch #3 was sitting in the arms of the 2 previously mentioned chairs… I know what you thinking… why would anybody seat on the arms of the chairs when the Wikipedia entrance clearly says that a chair is usually used to seat a single person… why the dumb bitches decides to seat together… is beyond me the thing is that they were sitting there… when a B&N employee came to explain that they shouldn’t being doing that… and this happened:

B&N employee: excuse me, you can’t be seating in the arm of the chairs, there is a chair right here in front of you that you can use…

Dumb Bitch #3: why not? We’ve been sitting here for 30 minutes without being any problems….

B&N Employee (who was wearing a face that screamed: did she seriously just say that?): well, is the rules only one person per chair.

Now this is the part where I start laughing like a maniac I couldn’t believe that was happening infront of me…. So I’m not sure what was being said.

Dumb Bitch #3: I’m not sure what she said but it had something to do with there not being a sign that says its only one person per chair….


Now at this point I was practically crapping my pants of how hard I was laughing… I mean I couldn’t ve the B&N employee didn’t grab a book or something and bashed the dumb bitch’s head off… it was so freaking funny like if the dumb bitch suddenly turned 10 and the B&N employee became her mother… the stupid thing is that after they finished their discussion on sitting manners and protocols it was established the stupid bitch kept fighting to the B&N employee who was just doing her job… after the “discussion” was over one of them pointed at me and said: something like “I love the title of that book” (customer service) and something else that I couldn’t catch cuz I was laughing too hard… all I wanted to say it was something of the line “omg, you the dumbest person I’ve seen in the last 3 months” but all I could do was laugh like an idiot =(

Now the thing I learn from this experience is that the dumb bitch is kind of right… there is no rules specifying how one should seat on the chairs… next time I’m there I’ma pull an Ata (old friend from highschool who liked to sit upside down) and mess with the B&N employee and telling her that there is no sign demanding that I seat like a normal human being =)

[Jasmine · Rating 4 out of 5]

So I was in Philly on Sunday with David to visit my friend Pix. Now I'm not a social person so I do well in New York, but in Philly I realized that the whole world is not as up on technology as me. At home I am not required to talk to people CVS, the train, regional rail, ordering pizza... I don't know if it's even possible to buy something from an actual person, so as pix got in line to buy train tickets at the window I had a bit of a panic attack at the prospect of not being able to just buy it from a machine. That night going back downtown I was not only require to talk to a person but I had to buy a ticket on the train cause not only were their no machines but there weren't even ticket booths at the stop. Not just that but I like calling machines on the phone, I hang up when someone tries to connect me to an operator. I email my father cause then it feels kind of like I'm talking to a computer and he's talking to a computer and there are no actual human beings involved. I like texting my friends more than talking to them. I'm more even, more calm, more reasonable. a lot of my closest friends are people I've known online for 6 years. Basically someday I should probably just plug myself into a computer and call it good.

Greg recommended this book to me when I told him Adam Thirlwell was making my head hurt. He use to recommend books to me a lot, most of the bizzarro I read and the really depressing books at some point link back to things greg recommended, basically dude has great taste in books.

This book reminded me of my mom who cannot open an email attachment, once when I sent her a paper she edited my email signature instead because she didn't know there was an attachment. I sent her a text once, six months later she told me she couldn't get this little envelop on her phone screen to go away. This book is like that. basically it's hilarious. The intersection of my world and my moms world, and my world sticking it's tongue out at her and telling her to get with the program.

[Greg · Rating 4 out of 5]

Like The Trial set in a contemporary consumerist society, right down to it's redemptive but bleak ending.

[jeremy · Rating 1 out of 5]

benoît duteurtre's customer service (service clientèle), despite a subject ripe for sociotechnological critique (or comicality, at the least), is largely a dull, uninspired affair. content to gaze at the reflection our hyper-connected society's glossy veneer proffers so seductively, duteurtre misses an opportunity to explore both the personal and collective expense incurred by our often slavish, non-reciprocal devotion to advanced consumer gadgetry (purveyed through the ever-sleek vacuity of clever advertising). billed as "a devilish satire by one of france's most audacious social commentators," duteurtre's 2003 novella is neither satirical nor much of a commentary. it is, instead, eerily similar to the insipid ramblings of a friend or colleague whom is either unable (or, more likely, unwilling) to learn a new technology or else is dissatisfied that his exorbitantly-priced magic space phone could not fill that lingering emotional void, after all. given that any denizen of the twenty-first century western world has likely had countless, labyrinthine interactions with the laughably-named "customer service" departments of major corporations (disproportionately telecom, cable, and internet providers it seems), a tale of a middle-aged man enduring his own frustrating experience is not necessarily the stuff of engaging fiction without something more substantive to the story.

for a more laudable, playful work on the needless bureaucracies and inevitable annoyances of corporate culture, check out fellow frenchman georges perec's the art and craft of approaching your head of department to submit a request for a raise.

[Jim Elkins · Rating 2 out of 5]

It is easy to see why Beckett encouraged Duteurtre. He has a controlled tone and pace, and the form is spare and fluid. This could have been an excellent exercise in form if it weren't for the subject, "customer service."

The content is consistently passe: the narrator struggles with personal computers and technology; he trots out cliched notions of capitalism and politics; he indulges in inept musings on sociology and demographics; and the whole is driven by a lackadaisical plot machinery to do with the frustrations of getting good customer service. Duteurtre seems not to know anything much about politics, or about people who write about the frustrations of consumerism, or about writers who actually know technology. The narrator is a lazy journalist who does his research on the internet, and the book could have been better if Duteurtre had seen more of himself in that character. I can't help but think he will be embarrassed when he discovers what people like Nicholson Baker, William Gibson, or Brett Easton Ellis have done on the obsessions of capitalist technology.

Other reviewers are wrong when they say this book is an incisive inquiry into consumerism, that "Duteurtre's metaphors serve as a testament that will allow later generations to see how society dove into the technology craze with gusto, and not enough caution," that the book is full of trenchant critiques of our blissfully ignorant consumer culture. The book has no insights that were not already worked through, in more powerful forms, by writers from Debord to Negri.

[Kate · Rating 3 out of 5]

this book is mainly about customer service being a terrible nightmare. this part was my favourite part

"i'm christian. you're muslim, and i respect you, because we have the same God. we can all come together with computers. i organize free internet training classes wednesday afternoons, would you be interested in coming?"

far from distrusting such a preposition, the muslim raised his beard to ask, "On PC or Mac?"

the priest knit his brow. "i know everything about PCs, but even if you're into Mac, we should be able to work it out"

also he does the wrong password a lot of times

[Portia Renee Robillard · Rating 1 out of 5]

What could have been a promising platform of commentary about the increasing depersonalization of the technological world, instead fell completely, lifelessly flat. Devoid of humor or at the very least original sentiment, even the characters fail to offer any dimension at all. The novella did succeed in creating a sense of frustration that comes with automated customer service, however that in and of itself does not prove to be enough to carry a compelling story.

[Ian · Rating 3 out of 5]

Something like a complaint about modern life, but not incorrect in those criticisms.

[Karlo Mikhail · Rating 4 out of 5]

This past week I was reading two short novels, one by Benoît Duteurtre and the other by Heinrich Boll. While both are satires, it is interesting to note how much the horizons of the peoples living in Europe has changed over the years.

Duteurtre’s Customer Service, published in 2008, problematizes the relationship between the individual consumer and the globalized capitalist economy. Boll’s The End of a Mission, published in 1968, tackles the relationship between the individual citizen and the modern state.

In Boll’s 1970s West Germany, the overwhelming concern of the intellectual class was the struggle against so-called “totalitarianism.” In this story about the trial of a man in military service and his father who burned an army jeep, we get hints of the prevailing discourse at the time of writing against the domination of the state as represented by the Nazi heritage and the threat of the eastern Soviet bloc.

Consider the following dialogue: “‘The Minister of Defence has no authority over my private parts,’ but the lieutenant disputed this, saying that the Bundeswehr needed the whole man…”

In another instance, the district attorney howled in protest when one of the witnesses praised the elder suspect’s profession as a carpenter by “pointing out that in the course of the last forty-five years of German history several carpenters had risen to the highest positions in the land, one even becoming head of state” – the witness, of course, wrongly alluding to Hitler who was in fact a painter.

The same attorney also vehemently objected to the same witness’ description of the accused as being “in a natural state of self-defence” against the state because this sounds “particularly subversive” in the sense that “no citizen, if he obeyed the law, could ever find himself in a condition of self-defense against the state.”

Meanwhile, another witness describes the younger of the accused as having “suffered from this ‘quaternity of the absurd’ – pointlessness, unproductiveness, boredom, laziness – while he, Kuttke, actually considered these to be the sole aim and object of any army.”

Strangely enough, unlike the dystopic aura of novels dealing with the same topic such as Orwell’s 1984, what we have in Boll is a very light, even comic treatment. This is no “Stalinist” show-trial as it is kept very low-profile nor is there the shadowy Abu Ghraib-type of brutality that the United States government tried to hide from public view. The prospective punishment is light (six weeks detention) and the two accused are not even concerned with the charges at all.

Fast forward four decades into Duteurtre’s 21st Century France and the focus of ire shifts from the state to the omnipresent and seemingly faceless global capitalism. This can be explained by the advent of neoliberal doctrine which reduced the function of the state from providing social welfare and regulating the economy to simply ensuring the smooth functioning of the global market.

Industries are deregulated while public services are sold by private companies as expensive commodities. The advent of new technologies accelerate the pace in which business and pretty much everything else is done while intensifying the alienation of individuals from each other and from the products of their labor. This is the world described by Duteurtre’s Customer Service.

It begins with our middle-aged narrator losing a “smartphone” given by his parents in a taxi. Things quickly turn awry as he seeks redress through the agency of the consumer service. He goes through several pre-recorded messages on the phone that is paid by the second before being told by a human operator that he must continue to pay for the lost phone’s subscription even if he gets a new phone.

Duteurtre wittily interjects: “This was the kind of highway robbery that the press, when writing about the economy, suavely refers to as a growth in the telecommunications sector.” And indeed, he eventually gets difficulties using his bank card, changing his flight, logging into the internet, entering his home, and getting access to a bunch of other basic needs. Things seem simpler without all the technological hassle of passwords and pin codes.

But instead of proposing the common Luddite solution to this problem, Duteurtre’s short novel understands that there is a deeper explanation for his frustrations: the monopoly capitalist drive for profit.

"On the one hand, these companies lure the public with cut-rate prices, enticing offers, publicity brochures, rock-bottom fees, and months of free service… On the other hand, once the consumer signs up, he must obey the draconian rules and pay penalties if he commits the slightest infraction… For the most minor complaint, the wait time is infinite and the billing for that wait period itself contributes to increased profit."

Here’s Duteurtre explaining our usual problems at the airport:

"All the planes were cancelled one after another for technical reasons… Actually, these planes were almost empty, which allowed the companies to fill to bursting a single plane, at the end of the afternoon. Of course, when he’s making reservations, the consumer has a choice… But once the tickets have been paid for, a hidden distribution operation seems to make sure of maximum occupancy."

He notes the irony of the myth of capitalist efficiency as opposed to socialist bureaucratic claptrap. The logic of the market is supposed to eliminate long waiting lines. But it would seem the opposite is the case:

"Since the widespread victory of capitalism – focused only on relentless competition, the continual growth of profit, a nonstop reduction of costs and personnel, a fanaticism for mergers – the consumer was becoming obligated… unless you belong to a well-to-do nomenklatura who could pay through the roof, delegate the tiresome steps, buy business class or get their complaints to the top of the pyramid."

This realization is capped by the revelation of the ideal of our monopoly capitalists: “to eliminate personnel totally and to perfect a system in which the customers did everything themselves from a computer terminal.” Indeed, the drive to maximize profit lends to the most absurd propositions. Yet, this is how today’s high-tech world of flexible labor, contractualization, and globalized production works to the detriment of the majority.

The only problem with Customer Service is its nostalgia for the bygone days of the social welfare state that supposedly balanced the interests of big business and the needs of the people. But as Boll already recognized in The End of a Mission: “Those ridiculous Social Democrats, those hypocritical crooks, they’re more capitalist now than the capitalist!”

http://karlomongaya.wordpress.com/201...

[Melville House Publishing · Rating 5 out of 5]

"The enfant terrible of modernity." -- Le Figaro

[Donald · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hilarious!

[Sandrine]

Ce roman bref s'étale sur 94 pages. J'ai laissé tomber à la page 53.

[Phrodrick slowed his growing backlog · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading the novella, Customer Service by Benoît Duteurtre, Bruce Benderson (Translator) had me thinking about how a less pathological Franz Kafka, armed with a sense of humor might have faced off against what passes for Customer Service in our oh so efficient days of free enterprise. While slightly out of date, this brief story captures the frustrations of the world of over dependance on bloat phones, passwords and the inter-connectedness of all things. All things financial for sure but the necessary disconnectedness of a mere customer with a problem, that another human, if so empowered could solve in minutes.

Our narrator begins the story with a high-end, much-loved cell phone. Early in what should be a lovely trip away from home, he loses it. Given that Customer service now means, do it yourself, he is rapidly locked out of any hope of being able to function. Along the way the only certainty is that nothing can be done, and that a person, real or fake has understood that what he needs most are more subscriptions to more expensive versions of the service for which he is paying but from which he is not getting any service.

At the end, Duteurtre makes a pass at giving the POV from the company that believes that Customer Service is in fact the Customer’s job. The result is uneven, while ignoring that the same company that makes no effort to get the customer the needed help, knows things about every customer, things they would never have authorized them to know, and operates behind extreme anonymity. The customer is not only an unpaid work force, they are a threat, except when they are being lied to in the name of promoting new sales.

The first part of the book is Kafka, in a clown face, the end is bland. Recommended mostly because it is almost necessary, and because it is short.

I am a fan of the Art of The Novella Series, and relatively new to its newer selection, The Contemporary Art of the Novella. All nicely bound, slim paperbacks, making available titles and authors I might otherwise miss.

[Sacha · Rating 1 out of 5]

Benoit Duteurtre, ici, nous présente un homme de 40ans qui découvre les nouvelles technologies et est assez sceptique envers elles et rencontre des problèmes avec celles-ci. Il va donc aller se plaindre au service clientèle.
Le livre essaye de nous montrer le monde consumériste, où tout doit s'acheter pour que ça soit meilleur et foncgionnel. Mais c'est fait d'une façon si simple que ça en devient lassant et inintéressant. C'est censé être humoristique, eh bien ce n'est absolument pas le cas (ou soit je n'ai pas d'humour).

[Bison · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Until the fall of the Berlin Wall, capitalism had opposed with its efficiency the cumbersome bureaucracy of communism: the logic of the market versus that of long waiting lines. And yet, since the widespread victory of capitalism--focused only on relentless competition, the continual growth of profit, a nonstop reduction of costs and personnel, a fanaticism for mergers--the consuming was becoming obligated. Supermarket checkouts like freeway toll stations, airport concourses with formerly-public-now-private ticket counters where you had to wait your turn to get information, wait your turn to pay, wait your turn to pick up the merchandise, leave very late on overly packed flights, navigate miles of traffic jams at a snail's pace. And if you had the bad luck of having a problem that escaped the set categories and fell through the cracks, this was the start of a much longer cycle of fruitless complaints to employees who were themselves out of their depth due to the blind logic of the organization.

In this way, a rise in productivity, a reduction in the workforce and the insanity of production were leading to a reintroduction of communism's waiting lines in capitalist countries; unless you belong to a well-to-do nomenkaltura who could pay through the roof, delegate the tiresome steps, buy business class or get their complaints to the top of the pyramid. Big business replaced the Party in its method of disseminating unreal agitprop ("Buy more. Travel more. Take advantage of our terms"), while treating its customers like herds of cattle forced to adopt to the profit margins of shareholders."

[MJ · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another great pick from Melville House's Contemporary Art of the Novella Series. Duteurtre is a French music critic and writer. Here, he focuses his satiric wit on the ever-more-powerful and interconnected business world.

Set in present times, the author describes a world in which corporations have infiltrated every move that their customers make - even when those customers have no idea they are even buying the company's product.

A global telecom company, with the mysterious "Leslie Delmare" as Director of Customer Service, is happy to help the narrator replace his beloved smartphone, which was tragically left in the back of a cab. Of course, there's a price. Not only must he pay for his new phone, and new service, he most also continue to pay for the lost phone service until the contract runs out. This is only the first of many incidents that lead him to a simple conclusion. Companies are attracting customers at cut-rate prices, locking them into unbreakable contracts, and then charging them for the most minor infraction of the rules. This creates a new source of income:

[W]aiting time had been transformed into an economic agent and source of profits.

See the full review on my blog: Wandering in the Stacks

[Brian]

Ultimately a brief, slight, fairly toothless satire, but has a few great moments. My favourite, in which a priest approaches an Iman in a McDonald's line-up:P

"I'm Christian. You're Muslim, and I respect you, because we have the same God. We can all come together with computers. I organize free Internet training classes Wednesday afternoons, would you be interested in coming?"

Far from distrusting such a proposition, the Muslim raised his beard to ask, "On PC or Mac?"

[Victoria · Rating 4 out of 5]

Customer Service was an amusing satire about our increased reliance on technology. You cannot help but cheer on the protagonist as he tries to fight against having subscriptions and applications that he does not need at all. His struggles are all the more funny because he refuses to keep up with all the technological advances being thrown on him. Loved this short novella.

[Tosh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ah the every day pressure of living life with computers and people who are connected to their computers. And the fact that it is extremely difficult in reaching a real live person on the telephone when you need service. Comedy that is more tragic than anything else.

[Richmond · Rating 5 out of 5]

A taut, slim novella/tall tale about becoming trapped inside a large telecom's customer service tricks and traps. Very realistic and infuriating, and yet fantastic at the same time. Vive le misanthropic French authors.

[Todd · Rating 2 out of 5]

Could it be a master stroke that a book called Customer Service is as frustrating as the real thing? No. Just because a lot of readers had to call customer service at one point doesn't mean that this book is interesting or good.

[Nicole · Rating 3 out of 5]

NoBSBookReviews

[Edan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm so smitten with these novellas from Melville house. This one is odd and very French. It felt right to read this on a plane, before heading to the wilds of Wyoming.

[Christine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Brilliant but don't read it in the middle of the night because it will fuel your (my) paranoia.

[Michelle · Rating 3 out of 5]

So French, so cute.

[Elusive.Mystery · Rating 3 out of 5]

A delightful short book about the author’s attempts at getting customer service in a technology-driven world. In French. In French (Service clientèle).

[Robert Drozda · Rating 1 out of 5]

Nízkoúrovňová komunální satira. My korporátní děvky víme, že skutečnost je ještě mnohem drsnější.

[Soksovannara · Rating 4 out of 5]

I live this book

[jaroiva · Rating 4 out of 5]

Po čtvrt století práce v zákaznických službách mě nemůže tato kniha nechat chladnou.
Trefně popsaný boj s hlasovými stromy a call centrovskými postupy z pohledu zákazníka. Ale tahle kniha je z roku 2003! Chce se mi říct ještě: "To buď rád, že ses tehdy mohl dovolat aspoň živému operátorovi".
Styl knihy mi připomíná trochu Qualityland. Jen je to o něco zoufalejší, protože to není sci-fi. Komu se ještě nestalo, že potřeboval něco vyřídit a nemohl se domluvit s hlasovým stromem nebo operátorem na lince? Tady je to dovedeno do absurdních extrémů, ale podstata je zachována.
Pro vyvážení doporučuji k tomuto ještě přečíst Klub vrahů od Pavla Renčína. Tam je call centrum z pohledu operátora.

[Jordan Zhu · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book does a good job of evoking frustration at customer service. But, like Leslie Delmare wearing mirrored Ray-Bans, the story about a man who is trying to get in touch with a human in customer service, is kept at a cordial distance.