Time was when service to the customer was the mantra of successful businesses everywhere. The idea has been popularized by such best-sellers as In Search of Excellence, and Good to Great, which foster the notion that fixating on the needs of customers is a key to business success.

How things have changed. Type "bad customer service" into Google and you get links to about 400,000 pages. And those pages are chock-full of customers who get waited on by lackadaisical fast-food servers, wander through superstores without laying eyes on a store employee, and look in vain for paper towels in public rest rooms. All this might lead some to the conclusion that customer service got ...