A recent, deeply felt loss has left me thinking about the importance of customer service.  My father in law passed away about one week ago, and the trials and tribulations of attending his memorial and internment made me realize how incredibly lacking most firms are in terms of customer service.

The funeral home managers set a high standard for customer service, trying to anticipate our needs and seeming empathetic to our loss.  In their case, I have high praise for their attention to customer service.  I guess in their business they treat every customer as if they just lost a loved one.  As I dealt with other customer service issues during the week with other service providers, I wondered if any of them set a bar anywhere near that level.

Clearly, the "caring" professions have to demonstrate a high level of customer service.  Places like hospitals, funeral homes and religious organizations offer assistance to people when they are at their lowest.  And, good customer service costs money.  There is a distinct tradeoff at work - how much should we invest in customer service?  Clearly, most firms want to invest just enough to keep an existing customer, but no more than that. So we consumer settle for less than adequate customer service.

As we went through the week, interacting with various companies (hotels, airlines, car rental, dry cleaning, etc) we had heavy hearts, and I found myself constantly comparing the service we were getting to that of the funeral home.  Would these firms treat us differently if they knew the "back story" about our travel?  Should they treat us with the same level of concern?

I found out the answer to that question with at least one of my travel partners.  Checking in to return home, I found out that our airline tickets had been booked for the wrong day by the airline.  However, since we were traveling on a bereavement fare, there was no cost to change tickets.  The young woman at the desk stared at me blankly and told me that we'd have to pay to change our tickets and that she'd never heard of a bereavement fare.  I convinced her to talk to her "manager".  The manager then proceeded to tell me that we'd need to provide evidence of death (already in their system) and then proceeded to change my tickets without asking for a seating preference, when I was traveling with my three kids.  After she handed me my tickets, I requested that she review the seating options since I wanted to sit with my 9 year old at least.  She said we could shuffle around on the plane, and left.

Now, this was crappy service and was provided by someone who knew I was leaving a funeral with small children, and who also knew I was a Platinum flier on their airline.  I know we aren't supposed to expect much service, but this lack of effort, empathy and customer service simply left me speechless.  I guess the expectation level at the major airlines today is:  Treat every customer like you'll never see them again.

Then, of course, we've seen the recent news about Sprint, which had a call center that was so overloaded that they requested customers email their issues and concerns.  What does it say when a telecommunications company can't adequately staff a call center?  I guess their level of customer services is Treat every customer like you don't want to hear from them now, or ever again.

In an age where you can get anything you want, in many cases at prices that are just too good to be true, recognize that those prices and selection come with a cost.  Eventually customer service is going to matter, and the few firms that seem to understand and be able to offer that are going to be the winners.