Remember when it came with a smile?

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With Ann Humphries ETICON

(CNN) -- "Thank you for calling Hidioshi Products. Please listen carefully. Our options have recently changed to better serve you."

Translation: "We're lying, we haven't changed our automated phone options for six months. And 'to better serve you' just means 'to keep you on the line longer by diverting your call through yet another five layers of uninformative and infuriating stalls because we actually have only five operators since the layoffs and they've had no training whatever and are paid something that wouldn't be recognized by an Elizabethan-era migrant as a decent wage."

QUICK VOTE
	How do you think the level of service you routinely encounter each day has fared in the past year? Badly. I see a lot of the tendency Ann Humphries is talking about it. I can't decide. It seems to me to be varying a lot from one industry to the next. It's holding up. I see a pretty fair consistency in service during the past year of market downturns and some layoffs. View Results

But you press on. You really want to get through to Hidioshi's "customer care" people. Forty-eight minutes later you do get through, only to find that the person at Hidioshi has no authority to make any sort of adjustment to your bill, your record, your order, your shipping arrangements, your account information (the system is down anyway, of course) or to your dwindling sanity.

And when you ask to speak to a call center supervisor, you're put on hold while your "customer care representative" goes to find that manager -- you're back in the queue listening to that endless loop of bilious commercial mythology about how "service is our foremost concern."

CNN: While spending the best years of our lives on hold, we decided to ask ETICON's Ann Humphries if she, too, had noticed a tendency for companies to cut their service operations when the economy gets shaky. She had plenty of time to go over things while standing in the 89-person line at the "patron pampering" station.

Ann Humphries: It's such a big mistake to put ill-prepared people for $6 an hour on the front line.

To begin with, that use of automation on the phone lines is a bad move. Call centers are designed to "get 'em on the line, get 'em off the line." But what companies forget is that customers know when they're being treated badly. And when you're not treated well, you're going to go somewhere else or make the company pay. You're going to call back, madder, and go for management -- maybe with lawsuits.

Letting your service go down during a soft economy is a prescription for failure.

I think companies can make a big mistake in good times, as happened last year when the economy was so hot that people took on more business than they could fill. You need to be honest and say, "I want your business but you might do better to try someone else."

Now that times are tighter and you have to pare down to the core of what your business does, you have to be sure the core is solid and honorable. Honor what you're supposed to be doing. In a hotter economy, you can camouflage flaws more easily. In a pared-down economy, there's no makeup -- you're out there, warts and all. The flaws are going to be magnified.

Genius is taking a look at things that other people overlook and really studying the process.

The narrow definition of etiquette is grounded in ethics and what's efficient. You want to manage the impressions you make. Corporations need to look at what they do. Look at how they respond in e-mail. How many people are there to answer the phone when customers and clients want basic information? How is your print material? How accessible are you?

Accessibility is so key now. I've met an attorney who said he once considered it a badge of honor that he couldn't be reached. Later, that lawyer said, he was embarrassed to have operated that way.

ARE YOU BEING SERVED?
	Instead of getting into a big line to choke some Complaints Department rookie, visit us. We're here all the time and you can give us a piece of your mind -- or an idea for an issue that should be addressed here in Corporate Class. Click here for our submission information. Don't hold back on our account.

In a hot economy, you might have been able to afford rudeness. In this economy, you can't.

You're at a store or some other business, and a clerk says, "You have to go stand over in that line." Your response should be: "I don't 'have' to do anything -- I'm going to call the president of the company. And you won't be jumping over lower management to speak to a supervisor if you're treated correctly the first time.

On the customer side, remember that your job is to be easy to serve. Don't be angry if you can help it, just work on the situation.

As an employer, you should hope you've established enough credibility with staff, clients and customers during the good times -- so they'll support you in bad.

Bottom line: Have some courage. Instead of preserving your bricks-and-mortar projects while cutting your service staff, look for a good approach to your market that you didn't see during the hot economy.

There are so many things companies can do when times get leaner. If you have to stop offering that full bouquet of flowers to each customer, don't throw out the concept with the flowers. There are many things a company can do to save money in a soft economy -- just don't cut service.

Ann Humphries, founder and president of ETICON, Inc. and a Certified Professional Consultant to Management, includes several Fortune 500 companies among her clients. Her commentary has been featured in Esquire, Money, Wall Street Journal, Fortune and Money, and on CNN, CBS, NBC in Salt Lake City and Lifetime TV. You can contact her at www.eticon.com.

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ETICON

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