Last week, I ate a Chinese restaurant in my area. I’ve been eating there on and off for years, but because of the great food. Their service was always kind of bland and they’re out of the way from my house, so I’d only go there if I was in the area. They’ve recently gotten new management and my experience last week was completely different.

Being of the younger generation (I just graduated from college in '09), I am very much engulfed with the advent of new technology. My peers were among the first to buy CD players back in elementary school, and then were the first to buy ipods/iphones/ipads when they came out. And there were several malfunctions of these Apple products upon their release. Each version seems to have several problems before they work out the kinks, and it doesn’t matter to us—we just need to get our hands on it—be the firsts to have that. That’s the thing with my generation—everyone’s looking for the newest technology.

The advent of automation has had some casualties…human interaction and customer service are, sad to say, two prime examples.

The Customer Puzzle…it won’t work if one piece is missing!

Service is a touchy topic. Everyone’s views and expectations of it are different. Not to mention, you’ll get different service everywhere you go.

Since I began working for a service company, I’ve been paying a lot more attention to how companies can improve their customer service.

Instead of finding real solutions to their problems, do you treat your customers like dollar signs and push unnecessary products on them? Did you ever think that by doing this, you may actually be losing money?