The customer is King, Queen, and Crown prince, so say all of us. Nothing new about that, let's get on with other things [like profits, stock price, and so on]. Sure, I'd like to get on with other things, but the agonizing truth is that those other nice things are simply not going to appear unless someone does something about dazzling the customer.

Are companies really serious about customer service? Do they really care about their customers? Well, here are some true tales to help you decide whether anyone takes the customer seriously enough.

One sultry afternoon some months ago, I was sipping a drink with the CEO of a Fortune 100 subsidiary out here. I was due to make a presentation to their board after lunch. We got talking about the customer, and I described Anita Roddick's simple philosophy - bewitch, dazzle, delight, and fascinate the customer. This guy got pretty upset about my use of the word Delight!

"Delight", he said, "what do you mean by delight?" "Well", I replied, "precisely what it means. Give great pleasure, please greatly."

"Nonsense", was his ready response. He then went on to describe how where he came from, the word delight was looked down upon, and seen as a cheap gimmick. I thought about it for a moment, and asked, "Tell me, how many of your customers come from the same place as you?" He needn't have answered the question, because the answer was simple - a miniscule handful. Yet this man who ruled the fate of his organization carried deep inside him some perceptions that weren't reflected in even a tiny fraction of his customer base.

This person had hardly spent time with his customers. Or if he had, the time spent was so superficial, he might as well have not bothered. What happens when a senior person such as this guy talks to his troops about customer service? Nothing happens, that's it. Oh sure, the company is still doing well. But not because of this man's leadership. It's in spite of his leadership. It's doing well thanks to the spate of innovative products the parent's R&D guys are churning out.

So why should the company care? To make more profits, why else? Will anyone care to guess how much money this company has left on the table? How many opportunities have been lost for doubling or even trebling profits, and increasing market share? No one knows, and no one will ever know. After all, some would argue, the earnings from the region get rounded off when aggregated worldwide. Amen.

Okay, so that's about a company chief's attitude, and far removedness from his customers. But such corporate philosophy worms its way into the customer's life. Here are some examples.

You book yourself and the family on a long haul transatlantic flight out of here. You belong to the vegetarian species, and request vegetarian food. The spouse has a bad back, so you also request for a seat with additional leg space.

You reach the check-in counter, and repeat your requests (that were made five months ago) to the airline employee. He checks the screen, and growls that no such requests have been received. Being a regular traveler, and having been bitten several times, you pull out your copy of the bookings and show him that in fact all these requests have been recorded. No, no, he yells at you (he is in mood to tell you anything anymore, he has shifted gears from tell mode to yell mode), travel agents simply print something out for customers without entering them in the system.

The seasoned person that you are, you take your tickets from him and run up to the airline office which is mercifully located on the second floor, and meet with the person behind another screen. She listens to you patiently, and in a matter of minutes, sets everything right. She even apologizes for the error, and wishes you a pleasant journey.

On your return, you send a letter to the airline, describing the incident. After a pregnant silence of over two months, you receive a clinical (perhaps computerized) reply stating that the matter is being thoroughly investigated, assuring you the very best, blah, blah,... Do you ever hear about those investigations? Of course not, dummy. You aren't important enough.

Net outcome - a family of four that flies each summer to North America swears never to fly this airline again. Not only that, the family also swears not to fly any place on that airline, and to tell ten other friends about it, as well. Does the airline care? Heck, why should it? What is one unhappy non VIP customer?

This attitude of airlines is so obvious. Just browse through their advertisements with pictures and messages of well known personalities. Heck, well known people will of course be looked after well. What's new about that? Who're these guys kidding? But simple common sense tells me that for the custom of every satisfied well known personality, (Commercially/Very Important Person, in airline speak), it is the cash of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of unknown common people that enables them to buy more Boeings, and see black in their balance sheets.

After a night spent in an airline seat that really cannot replace your cozy bed back home, you walk out to find trolleys conspicuous by their absence. No sweat, there's isn't much to carry. But there are 500 people forming a snaking queue, each with seventeen pieces of baggage, each as big and heavy as a coffin, awaiting his or her turn at the green channel. Since you have just a carry bag, and you notice five red channels with not a single person in queue, you walk up and ask the guy with three stripes why he doesn't simply convert the red channels into green channels (the only dexterity required is to turn on the green lights and turn off the red ones), so that passengers can quickly get by. No way, says the perfect bureaucrat, he can't do such a thing. I am so struck by his shocked expression, I wonder whether I should admonish myself for suggesting such a blasphemous idea. He offers a victorious smile, and returns with great zeal to what he was already doing - picking his nose! Gad.

So who are the real heroes ? Shouldn't we be concentrating on doing what Anita Roddick has relentlessly taught us - bewitch, dazzle, delight, and fascinate the customer?