Remember when you were greeted as you entered a business premises by a warm smile and an offer of assistance?
Remember when you had an enquiry about goods or services and got to speak to areal person who genuinely wanted to help you?
Whatever happened to good old-fashioned customer service.
I sincerely mourn its demise.

Move to the country. (and I dont mean a country city). Only last week the staff in reception where I work were complimented by a client on how cheery and helpful they were. Its reasonably standard around town, but then the population is less than 4000, so people are a bit old fashioned.

I agree country gal. From my experience, some of the friendliest places to shop start with the syllable "Bun". Places like Bundanoon, Bundaberg and Bunbury in WA. Then again, most of them are cities now.

my customer service woes have been with the large companies and trying to deal with them on the phone. I will use Optus as an example. My husband died in April and I rang to cancel his mobile which was in his name. They sent me a bill for a $294 cancellation fee and also his normal phone bill. I didnt have to pay it because it was not in my name but they kept sending bills and wanted me to sign a cancellation form ( the fine print said if I signed I was liable) All this happened because I asked how it was possible for me to keep my existing mobile number (which was in my husband's name). They would give me no information until I signed a form (which also said I was liable) I asked to talk to someone higher up than the supervisor and was told, when I signed the form they would alot someone to me. I had to take this matter to the Telecommunications Ombudsman and now I have my existing mobile number and my husband's bills have been wiped, as they should have been months ago. It seems the people hired to be customer service reps are just reading from a standard list and anything that is slightly out of the normal, they don't know what to do or what to say. On the odd occassion that you do get a "real" person in customer service by the time they transfer you you end up with a script reading supervisor so you are back to the beginning. BRING BACK OLD FASHIONED CUSTOMER SERVICE IN ALL AREAS OF BUSINESS

My God callie, what a nightmare! There is no way anybody, let alone someone recently bereaved should have had to go through that crap!
What makes me furious in all areas of business is that you have to wait on hold to talk to a real person and then they know nothing.
My recent gripe was with another well-known telecommunications provider who had changed the rules mid-stream on one of their 24 month locked in plans so that they still had us locked in but were under no oblgation to fulfil their part of the deal.It took the best part of two days of being shuffled around before we contacted the Telecommunications Ombudsman and got the whole thing sorted.
Other than that, my big gripe is with either being ignored or being spoken to as though I am an idiot by someone half my age.

Pity there isn't a simple answer, perhaps, with the larger companies, if more people took the time to put in a complaint and followed it through to the very end. I, like most people, have had problems with some of the larger companies before my husband died but the problems I have had after he died have just magnified. It seems like they are all out to get as much money from you as they can, even knowing that legally they can't. I even had Capitol finance ( an example only) take money from my late husband's account, they did this after receiving the death certificate letter Someone at the company changed the direct debt date so they could squeeze one last payment, 3 months after my husband died. It is a bit more complicated than that but that is the short version. When I queried the payment they took out I was told"you are not liable so what is the problem?" I then turned over all the emails and correspondence I had to the Fraud Department of the bank. The finance company then offered to return the money to me. It was the bank's money not mine and a little bit too late. For a few months it just seemed that every company I had to deal with was being difficult and extremely hard to converse with, then I though maybe it was my approach, but it wasn't. No one returned calls, no one even listened to what I was asking, no one until I went to the Ombudsman (in 2 instances) and threatened media intervention in 2 others and the other company ended up in Fraud Department. Not all was doom and gloom though, the Australian Tax Office, to this day, have been very good, they return calls and the customer service reps seem to know what they are talking about and if they dont they get help.
To me, a half hearted smile from a grumpy checkout girl is good customer service....well not really but it is better than what I have had in the recent months.:)

Customer service has gone down-hill! I have worked in customer service for almost 10 years now and I am horrified when I call another company and am treated like a neusence. What ever happened to "the customer is always right"? Companies are lacking propor training of their reps. and it is a job with a high rate of burn-out. Where I work, there are three girls who rotate phone coverage. Each has another duty on the side that they enjoy (example: I do the marketing) I find that by giving each of us another responsibility, it gives us each a break from customer service and alows us to learn a new trade. I love the marketing so much that I will be doing it full time as of next month. More companies should think of doing this because all of our reps are happy....which translates into happy customers.

There was once a time when people understood that when you dealt face-to-face with a customer you were there to listen and deliver the best possible service.
I would shop there and even pay more to be treated properly.
Can anyone tell me where to get customer service anymore?
I get tired very easily of the 15 year old pimple-faced, gum chewing checkout person who greets me with "yair?"
Even the traditional, large "classy" retailer, you know the one, has a customer service level equal to the traditionally lower ones and they make no apologies for the fact that they have let it slide.
Here's an interesting marketing idea for all those aspiring service industries...BRING BACK CUSTOMER SERVICE!
You'll get my business!

It seems to me there is a fairly simple fix. Enshrine it in law that companies must include in all their literature, contact details which provide direct access to someone with authority to make decisions. Not an answering machine, not some clerk who will take messages but incapable of dealing with anything themselves and most especially, not 20 minutes of "hold" music.

Why should companies like Telstra, and the banks be able make outrageous demands of people and then hide behind answering machines until most people simply give up. There is no good reason why the law can't address this.

It is time we all started voting with our wallets and only support companies that deliver excellent costomer service.
Then see if someone can keep you on hold or arguing for four hours until they sort out and correct their billing error!
The company I refer to starts with a T, ends with an A and has a large amount to do with phones.If they don't know how to give customer service, give the job to someone that does!

Voting with your wallet is all well and good in a competitive market, but most large companies like Telstra, Optus, the banks, Energy Australia, etc all have virtually identical practices of hiding all their decision makers behind a facade of answering machines, or customer relations people with inadequate knowledge or authority to actually deal with customer problems.

Competition theory alone does not appear to be able to address this. The threat of fines for this sort of behaviour might just do the trick.