If good customer service is the key to success in the 21st century, JOHN HARRIS asks why it is so hard to get.

I was happy in my relationship with my phone company until I had to start dealing with it.

It was like I woke up one day and realised that I didn't know the telco that was nuzzling in my ear.

When we first met in the early 90s, Optus was both exciting and responsive.

Whereas my previous phone company had taken me for granted for years and often keep me waiting when we made a date, Optus always answered my calls promptly, with a cheerful and courteous tone.

For the past few years, I bought new handsets and continued to use them on my out-of-contract plan with Optus.

Familiarity, I'm afraid, has tarnished the lustre of that long-standing relationship.

Our good thing started to go bad in May when I upgraded my wife's old phone to a new Nokia Navigator 6110 handset. Things got wobbly with Optus when I had to make repeated phone calls to configure the handset, a painful process fraught with frequent long delays on hold.

"We value your call and will answer you as soon as possible."

Those weasel words and the accompanying corporate propaganda were a world away from the helpful customer service that Optus offered in the beginning.

The wheels really feel off our relationship when I ordered my iPhone.

I have previously chronicled the charade of service associated with Optus (not) delivering the handset by a Toll Priority courier through requiring a signature but not providing a recipient name.

Joseph Heller would've been proud.

But it got worse. My new handset displayed the same "heavy breathing underwater" quality on some calls as the loan handset I had borrowed from Vodafone two months earlier.

Different networks and different SIM cards, I reasoned, so the problem must be a bad bunch of handsets.

After the obligatory 20 minutes on hold, I explained this to Optus Customer Service, who put me through to iPhone Helpdesk, where I was told the handset was faulty. iPhone Helpdesk then referred me back to Optus Customer Service where someone sent an email to someone else in the Optus empire.

I reckon Optus could give the Balkans a lesson in segmentation.

When told I'd be contacted the following week by an Optus representative, I mentioned I was flying to the US at the weekend and asked to be contacted by email.

Three weeks later, I had received neither email nor voicemail from Optus. Only after several more calls did someone from Optus return my call and offer to send a courier bag, so the phone could be shipped to Apple for repair or replacement.

How long would that take? I enquired. No idea was their answer.

Still, as my Irish great granny used to say, it's an ill wind that blows no good: As I'd used that inordinate delay to make other inquiries, a helpful chap at Apple noted that Optus and Vodafone actually share a 3G network.

Since then, the "burbling phone calls" on my iPhone have ceased, so I've decided not to consign my handset to the netherworld of customer dis-service in case the problem has been resolved elsewhere.

As for Optus, I will do my best to restore the former glory of our good thing by having nothing to do with it, except paying bills, for the next one year, 10 months and 26 days - after which I will again be a free man.

John Harris is managing director of Impress Media Australia. You can view his website at www.johnharris.net.au

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