Customer Service!!! Come out, come out wherever you are!

Lately all I seem to notice is how poor customer service is. What happened to lollipops at the bank window, or a free piece of cheese at the deli counter? Am I being irrational or has customer service taken a nose dive? I cannot seem to understand why businesses are allowing their employees to treat customers poorly. Recently I ordered a jacket from a Forever 21 which is also online. I purchased the jacket over the internet (on sale!), but when I received it, it just did not fit correctly. I loved the jacket, so I placed the jacket in the bag, instructed the store to send me a different size, put all the given paper securely taped to the bag, but then noticed that postage was not paid for. Strike 1. After three weeks I had not received or heard from the store. Strike 2. I call them. The customer service representative explains that the return policy for their franchise is that there are no exchanges, just refunds. This meant that I had to reorder the jacket (without any sort of discount) and wait for this one to arrive. Strike 3. You can only imagine how frustrated I have been with this company. I believe that this was poor customer service. How can there not be more customers complaining to this multi-million dollar corporation? There was clearly no sort of customer relationship being built, but instead rethought on my end. This is also a classic example of production orientation. Even though it was not necessarily the production manager's fault, but rather the company policy.

In my opinion, customer service will never go out of style. Building strong customer relationships will then build repeat customers. And repeat customers means referrals. If a business markets incredible customer service, like L.L. Bean does, the customer remembers this and wants to purchase many of their products from there regardless of price. It seems like common knowledge to the marketer in me.