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Old-fashioned. Fuddy-duddy. Picayune. Some may say that about me after they read this. My question today? Whatever happened to good customer service? I think it died the day the phone company started using a menu that takes a caller a half an hour to get to a human being.

I recently had an experience at my local drug store that left me stupefied at the lack of customer service the young cashier demonstrated as I was checking out. Now, hold on, I’m not just blaming the twenty-something generation. I think we’ve all dropped the ball along the way and, in general, our country has just gotten, well, more impatient and down right mean over the last twenty years. I want life today to be like it was in the movies from the 1940s and 1950s - neighbors helped neighbors, people smiled at each other when they passed on the street, and there was actually a sales person who worked in the hat department – and they could tell your hat size just by looking at you!

There are times, I know, when providing good customer service is frustrating. I had the experience on several occasions when I was working as a Manager of department in a hospital of being challenged by the family of patients who needed help. At one point, I was asked by a very irate “customer” who didn’t get the response he desired if I “had my head up my ass.” Was it hard not to yell back at him? You betcha. But I didn’t. I maintained my professionalism – he didn’t apologize and I was steamed for a while afterward, but at least I could say that I was the adult in our conversation.

Maybe it just boils down to the fact that we’re all so self-absorbed that we’ve forgotten how to be courteous. My parents were depression-era kids. My Mom worked for the Telephone Company in the 1950s – she traveled to different business and taught classes on how to provide good customer service over the phone. Can you imagine?

Tomorrow, I have to call my credit card company with a question. I dread it. I know I’ll be on the phone for at least fifteen minutes. And only about two of those will be with a real human being. I also have to go to the Department of Motor Vehicles, but there’s only so much rejection I can handle in one day.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 18th, 2009 at 7:32 pm and is filed under Life & Home. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.