With more services businesses opening their doors everyday, one would think almost all businesses would pay close attention to the quality of their service. A new restaurant has just opened in my small, restaurant-starved community...in less than two weeks, many consumers are already complaining about the poor service, saying they won’t go back. While the food is good, why does a person make a huge investment and not pay attention to the service that is rendered?

If you examine the complaints customers make to, about or against service businesses – perhaps your business, as well – they tend to fall into distinct categories:

Apathy: A just-don’t-give-a-darn attitude

Brush-off: Slam-dunking the customer with some standard procedure that doesn’t solve the problem but lets the service person off the hook for doing anything special.

Coldness: Hostility, curtness, unfriendliness and impatience with the customer.

Condescension: Treating the customer with a patronizing attitude. The customer knows nothing.

Robotism: The mechanized worker puts every customer through the same program with the same slogans, without any warmth or individuality. "Who’s next," attitude.

Rule book: Company rules above the customer’s needs. No exceptions and no use of common sense.

Runaround: You need to see "so and so" for that; it’s not my department.

When it comes to customer service, many owners and executives mistakenly believe that all it takes is to round up everybody in the company and given them a dose of "customer service" or have the marketing department come up with a nifty slogan. And, just about every company has a customer service promise in its advertising, whether they deliver it or not. If you can’t deliver quality, don’t advertise quality!

Abe Lincoln had a favorite riddle he liked to spring on people. He would ask, "How many legs does a dog have, if you call the tail a leg?" When the respondent would answer, "Five," Lincoln would chastise, "No, he has four. Calling his tail a leg does not make it a leg." And calling mediocre service excellent doesn’t make it excellent.

I am encouraged...more companies are redoubling their determination to make quality service a reality – whatever it takes. It takes time, money, executive energy and organizational transformation in some cases. Those who persist will gain the competitive ground, enabling their company to make a difference in its marketplace.