Hah! Some of these comments relate to so called service in the UK as well. My cable tv kept going off, so I called up to see if there was a fault and went through a ‘call centre’ menu. Eventually, after about 5 mins I got through to a voice mail and they said: ‘we’re sorry all of our customer service representitive are busy helping customers, please call back later’ click, burr…

I found a site called wizper. Looks like an interesting way of reeking revenge on these losers.

I don’t think GM is getting away with anything — do you? Despite “the blog” the talk, GM has a cost accounting mentality. And, deeply embeded and unquestioned in this view is a simple premise “customer delight is not a cost-effective long-term customer management strategy.”

(Customer delight being the opposite of apathy).

Despite this chicken-and-egg discussion, the dynamic is changeable by either side. Perhaps we should be talking about the cycle of apathy, which involves both customer and business. GM has been depending on customer apathy to maintain their position in the marketplace — bad call.

One gravel company in the gravel business simply instituted a pay-per-satisfaction invoice. A restaurant instituted pre-calculates a range of tips — from 10% for unsatisfactory service to %20 for outstanding service. A software company, wanting actionable feedback, added a “fund a feature” page.

Unlike meaningless opinion polls on web sites, these point-of-service tools provide a catalytic mechanism which will not be ignored. And that’s an information technology — not anything running electricity and hooked to the internet.