What Has Technology Done to Customer Service

The other night I was at my sister’s house for a party.  I walked in and there sat my niece and her grandmother at the computer.  They were registering Grandma’s coupon book card and Grandma wasn’t happy about it.  When I asked her what was up, she said that she called the company to register her card like she had done every year in the past.  This year they were not allowing phone registrations, you had to get online to register your card and no, they don’t do it for you.

What happened to customer service?  Just because we have some new technology, should all of our customers be forced to use it?  I do agree in setting a level of service expectation and then living up to it.  However, does that mean we can’t accommodate reasonable requests.  If we don’t start looking for ways that we can easily serve our customers, someone else will.  I just hope it won’t be the government.