Has Service Gone South?

I was recently asked by an upstart magazine to give my thoughts on “what’s wrong with Customer Service (is it diminished or trimmed out of budgets)?”

Here's my intro to the answer. I'll post the sub-parts throughout the upcoming week, and the link to the article once it's published.

It’s not so much that service is broken as it is the lack of passion and focus behind it that’s missing. I don’t think budgets are trimmed. I think they are misaligned. Too many resources are placed into programs designed to make-up for poor product design and/or lack of talent to relate to the customer. Money is too often spent on the “icing” without any concern for what’s in the “cake”. No amount of slick advertising, image campaigns or PR will make-up for an average product or for people who don’t care about what they do.