ABSTRACT
Customer care is nothing new. Top class nineteenth-century hotels and twentieth-century transatlantic liners were quite probably attending to their customers far better than most hotel guests are looked after today. What is new, however, is the ‘industrialization’ or ‘systematization’ of customer care. As service businesses have become bigger, more of the customers are dealt with by less professional and relatively untrained, often uncommitted staff. These are frequently from the secondary labour market, young and not well versed in social skills. And as competition becomes more severe, the need arises for a systematic approach to ensuring that the target customers receive the quality of service they expect.
