Why is bad service so easy to find?

When I am working with a company on service issues, I am often asked to provide examples of organisations that are doing it well. This shouldn't be so difficult! Yet it always seems easier to recount disappointments and outrages than the really surprising successes.

On one level, good service is like a friendly, wise Uncle, knowing better than you what you want and providing it with an amiable flourish, expecting no thanks, simply happy to make you happy. And most of us have that family experience, of parents, grandparents, uncles, aunts and so on - people who can look after us and surprise us with their care and attention. That is the environment that is at the heart of the human condition: we are, after all, family creatures, and modern economic necessity has severely disrupted people's experience of being surrounded by a caring clan. But I digress.

Modern business talks of care, but caring for people demands an individual response, not a process. Processes are pigeon-holes and the process-driven people are focused on finding a box to put the customer in, not what the customer wants. Any customer service environment that is driven by process must limit the chances of providing good service - there will always be people who do not fit the boxes.

Not to mention the limitations of the process, created by a business model and the drive for financial success. I was reminded of this recently when I placed an order for some photographic equipment with Jacobs Digital Photo, an online retailer. One of the items I ordered was displayed as not in stock, but would be available in ten days. I placed my order and waited.

And forgot, until I noticed the full amount on my credit card statement, some forty days later. So what, according to an un-named customer service person at Jacobs, was my problem? They said it wasn't in stock. It was their practice to take payment on order. I would get my stuff. Whenever.

My observations that their site was misleading (it still says available in ten days) and that they should not take payment for goods they could not supply were ignored. The process rules.