In this week’s New Yorker, James Surowiecki takes a brief look at customer service in America these days, and offers up some theories to explain why it sucks. Most of it is stuff you’ve probably already seen: it’s a cost center and therefore an attractive target when cutting expenses; bargain pricing makes it impossible; current attempts to make it more “efficient” just make it worse. But the real problem, he says, is that maybe companies are too concerned with the customers they don’t have. [More]
