In this age of improved communications, they may be getting worse. While technology may have improved the ability to deliver many messages to people and companies, it has not improved peoples' ability to absorb them. We hear about companies saying that customer satisfaction is critical and they are spending more time on it, but then we hear how it is getting worse. As an illustration, I recently had an amusing experience. I received a letter from the leagal department of Time Warner explaining that they were returning my "submission" unread. Now since it was not a submission, but a question, it was clear that they do not read letters carefully!
Each of us has customer service or contact stories to tell from our own lives. We need to assume that our customers can probably tell just as funny stories about us. Funny until we realize that they may cost us revenue and profit.