People Expect Poor Customer Service, Which is Why It's Only Gonna Get Worse

Ain't it the truth? If you want your real estate business to explode overnight, just go on vacation. What can happen a few days before Christmas, you may ask? Oy. But between my laptop, my iPAD and my Smartphone, I am never without communication of some sort. Unless, of course, I leave my phone in my hotel safe. Which is where my phone will be residing today.

That photo above is of the rabbit in the new Terminal at the Sacramento Airport. I know lots of people in Sacramento don't like it, but I find the structure attractive and invigorating. It makes me think my Hawaiian Airlines plane will be on time. Even though that is a fallacy, and Hawaiian Airlines did not put our luggage on our connecting flight in Honolulu. But that is to be expected.

See, this is the problem. We have become so accustomed to bad service, delayed flights, lost luggage, it's become the norm. The standard. In fact, there are people alive today, living in this 22nd Century who do not know that at one time receptionists used to answer the phone and those same people would transfer you to a department if you needed help. Employees in that department worked at the company. They cared about their job, and they cared about their customers. They would actually solve your problem or die trying.

Today, that person is in the Philippines or India. Pretty soon there will be no person at all. Nobody will answer your call, and nobody will help you. We have inferior and bad customer service but at least by god we have some semblance of customer service. And everybody is happy because there are few of us left alive who remember we once had good customer service. Do you remember when department stores had employees who were elevator operators? They wore a uniform, white gloves, and a little monkey hat. They ran the elevator by closing the criss-crossed metal doors and raising the arm that made the elevator go up and down.

No, of course you don't remember elevator operators because you were not born yet. If something doesn't work, you throw it away today. You don't expect excellence from a company because you have no idea what it is. You've never seen it. And that is a shame because you are missing out on a great pleasure -- the right to complain and bitch about it.

When we stop complaining, we have lost the battle.

But today I will deliver that short sale approval letter, send a long-awaited offer to anxious sellers, and put another short sale into contract. I will do my job as a Sacramento short sale agent to the best of my ability. Right after I send a letter of complaint to Hawaiian Airlines. And then I am taking the rest of the day off to run barefoot in the surf.

Photo: Elizabeth Weintraub, Android cellphone