We hear the words ‘customer service’ all the time, but what do they really mean? Are they a department, a personal attitude, a company value, or are they just empty words like ‘service station’? We all know that ‘self-service station’ might be more apt today. Many of us have had experiences with the so-called ‘customer service’ when no one else wanted to deal with our issue. And then there’s the company where we always ask for Mary because, from experience, she is the only one we trust to provide us with the customer service we need. Of course, there are those companies that are a pleasure to deal with, where we always feel valued. Sadly they are not as common as they should be. Worse, some portray an image that bears little resemblance to the reality. Let me tell you about a very recent experience of mine which proved that some companies still have far to go in terms of providing true customer service. One of our sons banks with a well-known bank whose long-term and high-profile advertising highlights friendly and efficient customer service. The reality was a shock: Our son recently returned from his first overseas trip; three and a half weeks in South America. As he was travelling on his own and he doesn’t speak Spanish, we were naturally a bit nervous and offered him plenty of advice. One thing he did was to visit his bank to advise them where he was going, so that they wouldn’t query a change in his Visa purchases, and to discuss how much cash he should carry. He was told that his Visa would be fine and not to take too much cash because he could draw on his Visa as required. Six days into the trip a courier delivered an envelope addressed to him and we decided  to open it late that night because it was obviously important. Inside there was a letter advising that his credit card was compromised and had been cancelled, and a replacement card. We had no way of contacting him, he had no cell phone, and he was arranging backpacker accommodation as he needed it. We had no itinerary other than flights. Not good for the nerves! Naturally we rang his bank’s 24-hour help line. That’s when we discovered that the word ‘help’ in ‘help line’ is like the word ‘service’ in ‘service station’. Initially I patiently explained the situation to the person at the other end of the phone and the potentially precarious situation in which the bank had inadvertently placed our son. I became increasingly frustrated when all he tried to do was to defend the bank’s actions rather than provide practical assistance. Empathy was definitely not something he was familiar with, despite the television commercials. After 20 minutes of getting nowhere, I asked for his name and he refused to provide his surname, so I asked to speak to his manager, who eventually answered the phone and also refused to provide her surname. I went over the situation again to make sure she understood our concern. She couldn’t, or wouldn’t, tell me why the card was cancelled and her only solution was to arrange to courier a new card despite my explanation that we had no specific place to send it to (I subsequently found out it would take 10 days!). My next plea was could she reassure me that he had sufficient funds in his bank account to draw on when he found out the hard way that his credit card was cancelled. Imagine my response when I was told "I can’t tell you that because of the Privacy Act". Next I asked that the bank provide a temporary overdraft to the same limit as his credit card, only to be told that wasn’t possible. At that stage I lost the plot! Eventually she offered to ring back in the morning after she had spoken to a more senior manager. We never heard from the bank, although the very helpful travel agent tried to get a message via the tour company handling our son’s trek. In the end technology came to our aid, with a posting on Facebook that our son read and responded to. Privacy Act aside, the difference between the bank and travel agent’s approach was like night and day, and I think I speak for everyone when I say that we’d rather deal with the travel agent than the bank in this scenario. If your so-called customer service department is more like a ‘department of defence against customers’, I suggest you rethink your strategies, or you may lose our account too.