By contrast, what frustrates people beyond vexing is when they are led to believe that they will receive a “premium” level of customer service, when in fact, they receive nothing of the sort. Such a mismatch occurs when the promise of “premium” has been made, inferred or assumed and has thus enabled the sale, but is never delivered because it quite simply has not been factored into the financials and operational systems of the company charged with delivering it, and/or no-one actually worried too much about who would be delivering the service (in terms of personality types) or what or how they would do so when they were recruiting and training staff.

For too many organisations, “customer” is an adjective not the objective. “Customer” is just a type of service. It’s a descriptor that has little or nothing to do with people, and everything to do with doing what has to be done – because, well, that’s business – and for little other reason. It is a service governed not by emotional engagement or the desire to excite but by SLAs that define what must be done (rather than what could be done).

It works like this – “they bought our products, and we promised we would provide them with customer service”. “We” don’t want to necessarily, but “we” feel we have to. It’s a cost of business thing. But “we” will do our damndest to make it as cheap, fast and simple as possible because that’s “smart”. We’ll cut some corners, fudge some issues, under-resource and hope for the best. So enjoyment will have nothing to do with the interaction and we’ll only train “our” people to deliver the minimum. “We” will meet our service level agreement stipulations. And then, because “we” have provided “them” (because that’s generally how customers are referred to in this context) with a range of services, ipso facto, “they” will have received “customer service”.