What is good customer service? There has been a lot of ink and pixels spilled on this subject, so I am covering old ground. Poor service continues to be a problem in our growing service economy, so perhaps more can be said.

I subscribe to the evolutionary psychology theory that human beings are still tribal hunter-gatherers at heart. For most of our existence, Homo sapiens lived in large, semi-nomadic tribes, following game. These tribes tended to be no bigger than 100-150 individuals, and everyone was related in some way. Everyone knew everyone else, closely. There was someone in charge, but few “laws”. Mostly there was custom and reputation. At this level, being very unpopular could be fatal.

Today, the world is vastly different. We interact with people outside a day’s walk on a regular basis. The people we live next door to may be unknown to us, while we are close to someone 500 miles away. Religious worship, work, play, all may be with different groups of people. The least intimate of our interactions comes when we buy goods and services. In these cases, we are talking to a rotation of strangers, who may or may not care about us on a superficial level, and most likely don’t care on any deeper level. This is the real impact of our hunter-gatherer brains; we can only really know around 100-150 people well.