How Do You Rate on Customer Service?

It occurred to me recently that there is rarely a day that goes past when we don’t have occasion to bemoan the lack of customer service in the companies that we deal with every day. If it isn’t one of the banks, it is a cell phone company or some department of a municipality or utility that has let us down and frustrated us. However, how do we rate when we deal with others? The reason I ask is that I’ve recently been recruiting for a client and they asked me to assist them by giving potential candidates a short test to measure their IT and communication skills. I have been shocked by the number of people who make appointments and then don’t show up. What is more puzzling is that it is often the candidates who have chased the hardest for me to short list them that don’t appear. Why would you do this? Why apply for a job and then not go through with the process? More importantly, why would you make an appointment and then not show up and not inform the person you are meant to be seeing?I think the problem is that people expect high quality customer service and consideration when someone is dealing with them, but don’t really care when the situation is reversed. Either that or they think that some people are not worth worrying about so they can afford to treat them with contempt. The way you deal with everyone, no matter how unimportant you think they are says a lot about you. You have no right to expect service excellence if you don’t practice what you preach (or in some cases shout about). Why should anyone take you seriously if you don’t act professionally when you are dealing with another human being?I’m a great believer in what goes around comes around and you never know when you will need the help of the person who you have just shouted at or whose time you have wasted. One of the candidates who didn’t show up for an appointment and sent me an SMS to inform me she wasn’t coming, several hours after the fact and in response to several phone messages, later applied to another job I was advertising. I don’t think you have to be telepathic to work out how successful her application is going to be.