Customer service is seen as an overhead by most large businesses (and likes of Google, Facebook, Amazon are the worst at dealing with anything non standard). In

Customer service is seen as an overhead by most large businesses (and likes of Google, Facebook, Amazon are the worst at dealing with anything non standard). In my work with utilities businesses even though they've had great feedback previously for customer service it's still seen as something to cut to the max. Companies who have previously had local call centres with 1000s (or more) staff were gradually being moved to cheaper locations, not just to save cost, but also to save massive pension and benefits liabilities. Once all these people have gone service drops off dramatically, but then even the offshore people are being phased out. This is just not seen as a priority. The only time I go to customer services is to get support for a non standard problem, I'm happy to go to online information to get the answer that I need so when I do need to contact someone it's usually something complicated to resolve. For older people though there really is no way for them to resolve even simple problems if they are not able to deal with technology.