A great deal of energy is expended by many of the largest business corporations persuading us that they are truly committed to providing excellent customer service.
If my experience is shared by other consumers looking for reasonable service from businesses, then these claims are hokum.

I am writing this from an Australian perspective, so mentioning specific names is pointless, but I will give some examples of what I have experienced.

A large department store chain is struggling to keep pace with its main competitor. The retailing group owning the department store chain is considering selling off the business, since they cannot see the solution to the poor performance. I have shopped at this department store. One time, I found entering the store to be an eerie, almost surreal experience. There were no people. Eventually, a few staff members and customers ambled into view. I asked for directions to find a product, and was told ‘to the left’ with the wave of an arm, and no eye contact.

A little later, I had to wait for the privilege of paying for the item. Staff morale was obviously at rock bottom, and it was no fun to shop there, so people did not bother. Any senior executive could surely have seen and sensed what I did. Too obvious, I guess.

The telephone company had a promotion which involved telemarketers calling and offering a deal that included a free cell phone. When I received the call, the telemarketer was based offshore, and had a heavy accent. To make matters worse, the telephone line was appallingly bad – I could barely hear what was being said. When I said I did not want a free cell phone the telemarketer demanded to know why not. I ended the call as politely as I could. For a telephone company to market its services over poor phone lines with a telemarketer who wants to argue with potential customers simply defies belief.

I was in one of our major banks, and overheard some conversation from the staff behind service desk. One of the staff, obviously experienced, was dealing with what appeared to be a young customer. She seemed flustered. When the ‘customer’ left, her colleague leaned over and said ‘that was a shopper’, to which she replied ‘I thought so’. The shopper was a phantom customer, used by the bank to check if the staff members followed the prescribed formula to deal with a customer. This branch of the bank dealt with customers who were both wealthy and of advanced age, some a little eccentric. To use the formulaic approach would risk driving them away.

We humans are a gregarious species. We enjoy communicating with our fellows - we need to be needed. We are hard wired to cooperate, so helping one another should come naturally. But no, decision makers, out of touch with day to day life, seem to come up with formulas to better what we do naturally. As I said at the start – hokum.

There is a very old and correct saying that goes on to say that a coin has two sides. Like a coin almost every aspect of life has two sides. For example the most common example can be taken of the advent of technology and the crime associated with it. With the advent of time and technology, computers have formed an integral part of the working society. Computers along with them have brought greater work and time efficiency in the working circle of the society as a whole. But there comes the twist.

Along with all the benefits that computers and technology have brought, there also comes the rising and alarming threat of cyber crime. Cyber crime in recent times has been credited along with a lot of attention by the general public, thanks to the almost impossible crimes committed by the hackers. The dangers that cyber crime is posing to computers and information in computers has been acknowledged by almost all the countries. Serious concern and alarm have been raised against the growing threat of cyber crime and its potential threat to the information possessed in the computers.

The reason that cyber crime is posing a serious threat, is because of the reason that most countries around the world have no existing law that they can exert against cyber crimes. This leaves the businessmen and their business at the mere mercy of the technology that is being used by the businessmen in their business. The only resort that the individuals have or can take against cyber crime is the way of self protection. Although self protection is the one step that people can take against cyber crimes, but still unfortunately it’s not a full proof safe step. As hackers can easily hack through the computers of others, this makes the information stored in the computer more vulnerable to information leakage.

One main reason why cyber crime has been gathering so much of attention, is because of the fact that cyber crime has no boundaries of working or occurring. Cyber crime have been reportedly breaching national barriers at ease there by jeopardizing the political and the defense strategies of the country in front of the other nations, as it has been reported that after committing the crime the hackers sell the leaked information to the rival countries for money.

The other reason as to why cyber crime is posing a serious threat is because of the fact that it is usually very hard to track the hackers as they operate together but from far and different places, making it harder for the law enforcers to track and find them. These hackers usually operate from different and far off places, sometimes even different countries making it almost impossible for anyone to track them. Thus national bodies and governments should operate together to make a legal framework and structure through which no hackers can slip through after committing cyber crime.

Tags: Cyber Crime