Recently a company I know rolled out a customer service campaign to its staff. It was very high profile: the walls of its offices, inside the lifts, even the mirrors inside the staff washrooms – all available surfaces were plastered with slogans designed, I assume, to exhort and inspire staff to do more, to do better.
Quite right too, yes? I mean, what's wrong with using shareholders' cash to do this? Customer service is everything, without good customer service a company will, in the long run, suffer. I emphasize "in the long run" because although, as attributed to JM Keynes, in the long run we are all dead, some people would have pointed to Ryanair as an example of how to prosper and thrive even with consistently poor customer service. But even that institution has had a re-think and is telling customer show they have changed.
(Read more: Yes, your boss probably is happier than you are)