Tom Peters, love him or not, wrote two fantastic books in the 80's: "In Search of Excellence," and "A Passion for Excellence." While some of the companies he described turned out to become later on not so excellent, many of his ideas about customer service have been models for those companies who took them seriously.
One of his questions (paraphrase): "If customer service is a commodity, then anybody can do it. So why aren't people doing it?"
Because it's one of the fundamentally difficult things a business can do, and it starts from the top with managerial leadership.
Customer service, or customer care, in general, sucks.
And I think it always will, except for those few who get the point, something so idiotically obvious that one SHOULD understand: That customers are those who produce revenues that lead to profits, and excellent customer service is the way to secure and retain recurring revenues and keep customers actually HAPPY.
Dex