@Guinness416: You’re absolutely right – I’m more likely to be stunned by DECENT customer service than anything. Good customer service is downright shocking. And the company I’m talking about knew that they had so few competitors that there was almost no chance we’d leave them – and their competitors are famous for horrible service (and prices) too.

@Bill: I think the word “capitalism” is overused in America. As you said, so many services are monopolistic: energy, telecommunications, water. In less populated areas it can be even worse. I don’t know what the answer is. The telecommunications industry was famously deregulated from the monopolistic AT&T (not the same company that’s called AT&T today, of course). The industry fragmented, competed savagely, then reconsolidated into regional monopolies. How do you force competition? I assume that if a local phone company was awful enough, a competitor might come in – think Vonage vs. the phone company, for example, or cell phones versus land lines. But those changes take a long time and we end up with highly inefficient systems in the meantime.

@deepali: I’m sure you know that I wasn’t really trying to pick on India. It could just as easily have been the Philippines or China, of course. Here’s my biggest problem with globalized customer service – I have yet to see any outsourced customer service do anything more than refer me to another number that can only be called from 9 to 5 weekdays. If they could actually fix something I could see the point – but it seems to be largely a delay-and-frustrate tactic. I do feel bad for the people in the call centers – it must be tough to deal with so much fury on a daily basis.

Not a jibe at you, Steve – I feel your pain on this one. Just a general frustration at misguided globalization.

One reason why I love the little, local guys – you always get great service. And when you don’t, they make it up to you in ways that count. I’ll pay extra for the reduced stress.

Oh, they’ll sell you a service, but they often won’t deliver.

For industries like telecommunications (energy is another), it might not be a bad idea for the government to fund the build out, and let service providers compete to provide the content and delivery. Then, there might be dozens upon dozens of competitors begging for your business.

Competition breeds innovation, efficiency, and, most of all, excellent customer service. If you cannot provide those things and I have viable alternatives, I walk next door to your competition and sign right up. In this case, there would be no riff-raff, either, about having to “re-connect” or set up my service: It’s already on. Billing would simply have to be switched.