Please pay attention to customer service.(Column)

I'll get right to the heart of the matter. Is it me or is customer service getting worse instead of better?

An article in the June 23, 1997 issue of Newsweek inspired this month's column. Entitled "Dissing Customers," the article talked about the poor state of customer service, using the airlines and telecommunications companies as prime examples.

The article's premise was that for all the talk about better customer service and improved customer satisfaction, things are getting worse instead of better. From where I sit, I not only believe this is true, but I declare that today's customer service is a joke. Let's take, for example, the two industries discussed in …