If these statements are so true, then why organizations still fail to ask their customers frequently question such as: “Are you happy with our service?” The answer – The organizations in question perceive customer happiness can only be achieved through efficiency and compliance.

My recent visits to a particular service center proved to be a worthy case study. The experience occurred unfortunately due to a 2 weeks new (pun intended) laptop having to be sent in for repairs - 3 times! The irony of it all, the total cost of parts replaced throughout the ordeal was almost equivalent to the cost of a brand new laptop. No apology was extended, no empathy was demonstrated and no option was offered. Despite having the product fixed to its intended state, organizations such as this exemplifies a “Task Oriented Service” approach. Once again, customers are creatures of feelings. In this instance, the organization (through the representation of its people) failed to acknowledge and manage the customer’s unhappy feeling, as the focus was more towards rectifying the faulty product at hand (i.e. object) than the unhappy customer in distress (subject).

Such “Task Oriented Service” approach is increasing in popularity. Centers and contact points established by organizations to serve customers are getting impersonal in an exchange for efficiency, compliance and at times, cost. Telephone calls are answer by pre-recorded voice and facilitated by Interactive Voice Response; banking transactions are concluded through machines; purchases are made with the use of computers; and the implementation of self service.

As more and more organizations embrace “Task Oriented Service” approach, customer service will no longer be a human-to-human interaction experience. It is the beginning of the impersonalized service evolution.

Zig Ziglar is an all-American success story. Affected early in life by his father’s death, young Zig learned great compassion for people plus commitment to a hard-work and balanced-life ethics, at the knee of his highly principled mother.

Ziglar's motto is: "You can have everything in life that you want if you will just help enough other people get what they want.” Implementing this precise principle, businesses and organizations throughout the world have grown more profitable by improving their number-one resource—their people. Since 1970, he has traveled over five million miles across the world delivering powerful life improvement messages, cultivating the energy of change.