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On nearly a daily basis, I find myself asking the question, “What has happened to customer service these days?” Perhaps part of the problem is that I’ve let the corporate-speak term “customer service” enter into my vocabulary. How about just treating me fairly? Then you won’t have to invent an entire department filled with employees with fictitious titles, absolutely no authority to make decisions, and call them “customer service representatives.” Frankly, I don’t feel well represented.

Case in point: a certain telephone company runs ads saying that you should switch to their DSL-based high speed internet service because they’ll give you the same speed as the cable company, but at a much lower price. Great. Sign me up. Which I did, 7 weeks ago. After three different sets of technicians came out to try to get it right, the best they could do was a speed roughly 8 times slower than what I was already getting with cable. Fine, I’ll stick with what was already working well, so I call the phone company to cancel. “I don’t have the authority to cancel your account,” says CSR #1, “but I’ll have someone who can call you tomorrow.” Translation: when it’s convenient for us. In all it took me five different phone calls and a trip to one of their stores to finally get the account canceled. I’d estimate I spent 15 hours getting that done. What does that tell you about how well this customer was represented?

Counterpoint. I’ve got a development team completely immersed in Ruby on Rails. One of the bibles of Rails development is Agile Web Development with Rails by Dave Thomas and David Heinemeier Hansson, so I bought a handful of copies for the team. While looking something up in one of the copies last night, I noticed my page numbering went from 56 directly to 89, so I sent a note to the publisher, The Pragmatic Bookshelf. Not even an hour later, I got an e-mail from Ellie Callahan at The Pragmatic Bookshelf, asking for my address so that they could express ship a new copy to me, no questions asked. There was no, “I don’t have the authority to…” or “…someone will call you tomorrow.” She simply apologized for the printing error and took take of the problem. They now have a customer for life.

It’s something simple we impress upon the people here at Barefoot all the time. Do the right thing. Do the best work possible. Treat our clients and co-workers fairly.

One of the two companies mentioned above will not only continue to get my business, but they will get my support and recommendation as well. The other will not. I’ve quite literally put my money where my mouth is by linking to those I recommend.

One of our copywriters here at Barefoot, Sarah Knott, brought to my attention a study published in the March 21 issue of the journal Science that suggests people gain even more happiness when they spend their money on other people than when they buy stuff for themselves. You can read a nice overview of the research here on Yahoo Health.

While I think these findings confirm what most of us would intuit, it still offers up some good food for thought when it comes to marketing products. How might we as marketers add a philanthropic aspect to our brands that makes people more likely to engage with them, spend money on them, and feel better about doing so. I suppose the whole “(RED)” initiative to help fight AIDS is one clear example (though there’s considerable controversy over this specific program because the money spent advertising it has so far outpaced the money raised for the charity). I can also think about some fly fishing equipment I have bought from brands that support conservation efforts, which has made me more passionate about the brands, and, yes, more happy with myself.

New research, just announced in the journal Pyschological Science, suggests that happiness is, in part, genetic. The University of Edinburgh study of about 1,000 pairs of twins, identical and not identical, concluded that genes accounted for about 50% of the personality traits that make people happy. (Our relationships, health and jobs contribute the other 50%.)

The study showed that identical twins, who share the same genes, were dramatically more likely to be happy than their non-identical twin counterparts who don’t share the same genes. “This strongly implicates genes” as a key factor in happiness, the study director told Reuters.

By the way, what are those personality traits that keep a smile on their owners’ faces? According to this study: It’s being sociable, stable, hardworking and conscientious. (See, your grandmother was right, if you’re kind and have a strong work ethic, you’ll get more out of life.) Of course, owning a BMW or a high-end fly-fishing rod doesn’t hurt either.