Where has all the Service gone? (part 2 of 2)

This article is continued from Where has all the Service gone? (part 1). My third story is, surprisingly, about Qantas. Yes, customer service is not just declining in the UK. With all of the complaining going on in the world, I like to remember to write to organisations to thank them for their good service. I feel that this is important. Qantas is one such company that I have contacted in the past, as I have always been terribly impressed by their service. My last trip with Qantas (also my last trip with Qantas) was incredible. My new wife and I flew to New Zealand via Thailand and Sydney for our honeymoon and to introduce my wife to my home country, family and friends. Not one leg of our journey was without problems. We booked our tickets in advance, were always at the airport 3-4 hours in advance, and yet on one leg, we were not even able to sit next to each other - in fact we were initially given seats at opposite ends of the plane. We had broken seats, broken TV's, and bad service. On one flight we had an attendant who dropped everything, allowed trollies to escape down the isle, and was just never there. She could be forgiven as she appeared new, except for the fact that she spent most of her time with one particular passanger, and did everything she could to rush back to him at every moment. I mustn't go into everything, but trust me, every leg of this trip had something totally unbelievable, and this is comming from someone who is very carefree, accepting and never likes to complain. In the back of my mind was the fact that I had heard from more than one person that if you complain to an airline about a broken seat, you usually get at least the cost of that leg refunded, but mainly I wanted to write to Qantas to tell them of these experiences and how much this trip had been far, far below what I have come to expect of Qantas over the years. I wrote my email to them very carefully, making sure to just state the facts, to praise the good points, and to not complain. The reply that I got back was a huge surprise. There was not even a hint of sorrow or sympathy. The bad points from our journey that could not be blamed on someone else, were ignored. And the rest were blamed fairly and squarely on our travel agent (they should have put a note on our booking that we wanted to sit together) and on me. There was not even a slight feel that Qantas was in any way responsible for anything, and in fact, they were angry that I had written at all. The funny thing is that I am incredibly habitual. A "We are sorry that you experienced an unusual number of problems on our otherwise flawless service" would have appeased me and would mean that I would still be flying with Qantas. But instead, not only do I fly with other airlines now, but I always recommend others to not fly with Qantas, whereas before I always recommended them. Sure, little old me is not going to bring down the empire, but that is not the point. Let's Return to Old Fashioned Customer Service

You know what? I do not think that it is as simple as that. I think that the computer age has a lot to do with this problem, and has helped cause this customer-service-less age. When I first began setting up websites, I was annoyed by the number of other websites who never got around to replying to my queries. I vowed that I would always respond to each and every email I ever received. And I did ... For a while .... When I receive emails sent via forms on my site, I first have to apply some logic to see if it is a genuine request, SPAM, or someone collecting valid email addresses with genuine-like requests to websites. Unfortunately, I think that I probably delete too many genuine emails as they just do not appear genuine enough. There is a particular trend in information gathering which can be read about elsewhere, which has come about due to so many people having easy access to the Internet. This can be seen in two ways. First, if someone wants to find out about a subject, they will use a search engine to find an appropriate page, read the information (true or not), and become an instant expert. The second technique for information gathering is to find an appropriate looking site and, instead of reading the information, send the website's author a list of your questions. This way, the researcher (hopes to) receives a succinct description of what they need to know. This is also known as 'laziness'. I have come across this many times with one of my websites, CBD-Search. People are easily able to submit their Christian websites for inclusion in this directory by clicking on the 'Submit Resource' link, found on every page. I have used a variety of techniques to make this option clear. I even once had an animated GIF button that slowly circulated through about 10-15 phrases such as 'Submit URL', 'Add Site', 'Include Resource', and every other combination I could think of. Still, I continued (and still do), to receive the usual emails saying "Can you please include my website in your directory". I can not suppose that people can be so stupid, to not just click on the appropriate link, fill in the short form, and click 'submit', so I must assume that they are too lazy and would rather make the process more difficult for themselves. I also receive other requests such as, "Can you please send me a list of websites for Christian bookshops". Easy! I just type "Christian bookshops" into the site and send them the resulting URL. Well.... I used to. I receive many other emails seeking openly available information every day, and this leads me to my second rule of logic for filtering the emails that I will reply to. If it seems like a stupid request, the email gets deleted. I am sure that my two step technique for deciding whether I will reply to a customer, results in many legitimate emails being deleted, but in this age where people are sending too many emails, how can we keep up? So, yes, I am also part of the problem. Some people probably find that my customer service also stinks. What to do? What to do?