I don't like the tyranny of optimism either, but I wouldn't wish UK customer service on anyone that's dear to me. Nor German one for that matter, a place that they conveniently call "Servicewueste"(service desert).
I absolutely love US customer service, but then I also get annoyed when incompetent service agents keep trying to help when they should really hand it over to someone more competent. I guess that's because they are worried that they might lose their job if the customer is unhappy.
I always joke that every company needs exactly one German. One German is enough to call out all the bullshit americans praise over the top, but if there's too many nothing will ever get done because everything is impossible.
I really wonder if there is a middle ground. I certainly haven't encountered it in any country I've lived in.
Yes, I'm an American but back in the mid to late 90s I had a job that took me to Germany a lot. I think I wound up doing about 20 trips over about an 8 year period, one to two weeks each time. I didn't have any problems with the service, one I adjusted a bit to some different conventions: Germans tend to be blunter sometimes but they'd still help handle what I needed to get handled efficiently. I could struggle through basic conversations in German by the end of it, but we'd usually switch to English for anything nontrivial (or a language mix if the person I was talking to had limited or no English).
I absolutely love US customer service, but then I also get annoyed when incompetent service agents keep trying to help when they should really hand it over to someone more competent. I guess that's because they are worried that they might lose their job if the customer is unhappy.
I always joke that every company needs exactly one German. One German is enough to call out all the bullshit americans praise over the top, but if there's too many nothing will ever get done because everything is impossible.
I really wonder if there is a middle ground. I certainly haven't encountered it in any country I've lived in.