Let’s go back to the evolution of the telephone. The email that exists is still limited to some happy few. But the telephone is widespread by now and has become a part of the popular culture. Perhaps taking this into account, in 1967, AT&T, a big telecom company in the United States, invented the system of toll-free numbers.

Now, users could call a company and complain for free! The cost of a phone call was no longer a limitation for the success of the helpline.

Customers could now be less stressed about the cost of the interaction and fully enjoy the help provided by a business, even if it took more time than they had anticipated at first.

This article is part of the book "A Tiny History of Service Design, " a tiny two-hour read that goes through the historical events that created what Service Design is today.