Customer Service - Now a Foreign Term in the United States?

A writer writes!

I encountered another customer service failure in the past week.  This time the property management company servicing our community was the culprit.  I asked a specific question and the company representative, from Kirkpatrick Management, gave me a response saying that the service I requested would be handled by a contractor.  the Kirkpatrick management representative didn't make an effort to find out from the contractor when the service would be provided.

I waited a few days and then sent a follow-up email to the neighborhood board that oversees the provision of services by Kirkpatrick.  So, with a chance to redeem himself, the representative came back with another response after our neighborhood board asked for more specifics.  The response this time identified a potential week when the services might be performed.  The property representative made no attempt to have the contractor provide a specific date.

And we wonder why foreign cars became the first choice of Americans?  Now is the time for all companies to pause and reassess whether their workers are providing the type of quality services desired by the customer.  Patrons need to boycott those companies that do not provide quality customer services.  Companies need to learn through economic losses that they just can't treat customers with disdain.

One of the more graphic current customer service failures is the scandal revolving around the Veterans Administration.  Allegedly lack of quality services may have lead to the deaths of numerous veterans.  When someone's life is at stake the services provided should be the best possible.  It is totally unacceptable for services to veterans being anything less than first rate.

Now is the time for a new customer service standard to be adopted by both private sector and governmental agencies.  It must be a standard that does not accept customer service failure.  It must be a standard that only promises the best effort in all steps of a process.  Finally, companies need to reassess whether current employees in customer service positions should remain in those positions.  New hiring of employees in customer service positions needs to be more stringent to ensure those qualities and personality characteristics needed to excel in a customer service position exists before the person is hired.

How many more failures will American companies and governmental agencies accept before making changes?  We as customers need to say, you've reached your limit of failures.  Change or lose our business.  Or in the case of governmental agencies, we demand changes now.