The obvious answer, which would reflect well on the integrity of the company, was a recall. But a recall was costly. When he thought about it further, Charlie figured that it

wasn't a major problem after all. The bugs affected only a few features, and the chances were, he reflected, that customers wouldn't even notice them.

But they did, and they started calling. Charlie was able to help the early callers by walking them through a fix over the telephone. It was just a matter of rewriting several lines of code. But as more and more customers called, Charlie found that the problem was taking too much of his time. So he added an item to his voicemail menu.

Now, after patient callers waded through "If you want to know your nearest representative, press 1; If you want Accounts Payable, press 2; If you want Accounts Receivable, press 3," and so on, they would finally find "If you are encountering problems with Instrument X, press 9."

The "press 9" callers were routed to his Tech Support department, where a technician who wasn't fully familiar with the instrument read from a script advising the caller on how to go about fixing the software.

It wasn't long before Charlie became aware that the technician found the job tedious and boring. That left a bad impression with the customers. Even worse, it took up a lot of valuable time in the tech-support operation-and that cost money.

So Charlie hired an actor to read the script. The actor recited the software fix slowly, distinctly and with high drama. The fellow yearned to play King Lear one day, and he figured that one caller might recognize his talents and recommend him to a theatrical producer.

The actor's performance, Charlie recognized, was quite impressive, but not suitable for helping an engineer through a software fix.

Charlie analyzed the situation more carefully and decided that the role required a woman's voice. A female voice, he'd once been told, tends to be more distinct. And besides, most engineers who called were men, and Charlie assumed that men preferred dealing with women.

The woman he hired was good, but too slow. As more and more engineers encountered the software problem, the calls started piling up. Callers had to wait in line, listening to a repeated message: "We are encountering unusual call volume, but please stay on the line because your call is important to us." Customers were getting angry.

A backlog problem obviously meant that those taking the calls had to work faster. So Charlie hired another woman who spoke very distinctly and very, very rapidly.

Unfortunately, callers couldn't listen fast enough. They couldn't follow her instructions and certainly couldn't take notes.

Charlie started getting lots of calls again.