I will never fly Air Canada again.  For me, that’s nothing new. It stems from poor customer service many years ago.  Yes, if they were the only airline left on earth, I’d take the slow boat to China.

It is a long and winding road.  Not that road to China, but that road leading to better customer service.  It would seem to be a no-brainer, getting good service that is.  However, its much more rare than you might think.  Getting employees to buy into providing good customer service is often very challenging.

As Canadian songstress Amanada Marshall might say, “everybody has a story.”  When it comes to good customer service that’s certainly true.  What we remember mostly are those horrible occasions when customer service resembles something from the Stone Age.

Examples of this are legion.  Take the banking sector as one example.  From an economist’s point of view its not rocket science what is going on in southwestern Ontario.  Banks have cut, cut and cut back again.  Branches have closed, employees have been let go and voice mail has replaced reception.  Anywhere bank machines can replace actual people its done.  Bank consumers have become used to this poor service.

Of course our Canadian banks have billion dollar profits.  Into that environment came a phone call to me the other day from a bank official asking me about customer service satisfaction with regard to my recent visit to their bank.  Hmmmmmm.  The short version is I went off.  The long version is I had a lengthy conversation with this bank official who agreed with me.  Customer service in the Canadian banking sector is sorely lacking.  With Canadian banks eye keenly on earnings per share, you can bet in this regulated environment it isn’t going to change.

Banks are one thing.  Hospitality is another.  When is the last time you had a bad experience at a restaurant?  Sure, some of you might have had one recently but for the most part its far and in between.  However, if you do have a bad customer service experience the effect of it is immediate.  You can complain and get some type of satisfaction.  This type of immediate “take no prisoner” approach to customer service usually ends up in a happy consumer.  If not that consumer never visits that hospitality outlet again.

Canadian consumers should demand good customer service.  However, for the most part I think consumers are numb to mediocre customer service.  When service is good on the other hand, it’s almost an anomaly.  Thinking that it should be good every day is almost too hard to imagine.

Take our big department stores for example.  There may be some very good people trying to give some good customer service at those stores. However for the most part I think consumers wander through not necessarily expecting any help.  It’s self-serve, with background computers measuring inventory and reordering what flies off the shelf.  For many consumers imagining anything else is something dreams are made of.

Of course everybody is happy when they get good customer service.  It’s in everybody’s retail 101.  The problem is many in the retail sector start off at low wages with the definite plan of “getting out” someday to something much better.  This challenges managers who may cringe at the sight of a newbie salesperson dropping the customer service ball.  Trying to get them to build customer service relationships over time are an end game when they cannot see their own way ahead.

You might wonder about “gender differences.”  Do women look at customer service differently than men?  Or is customer service something, which is gender neutral?  I don’t know.  However, I do know that women have been sought after in traditional male dominated sectors like agriculture to help boost customer satisfaction.

That doesn’t always work.  I talked with a couple of very attractive women who were “manning” a sales booth at a regional farm show.  I went up to one of the women and asked a question about their particular product.  They looked dumbfounded at me and referred my question to the grey haired overweight white guy over to the side.  Their job I was told was to just get men in to talk.  I went away with my question totally unanswered.

And so it goes.  Good customer service is a riddle and I don’t get it.  As an economics writer I often write about the lofty economic trends and numbers, which make us money.  However, at the end of the day that money meets customer service.  Whether that customer service is good or not decides who gets the money.  Why it’s such a mystery is something I’ll never quite understand.