Unpredictable. Unfocused. Just like life.

Southwest Airlines cares so much about their customers that they have a "chief apology officer":

But no airline accepts blame quite like Southwest Airlines, which employs Fred Taylor Jr. in a job that could be called chief apology officer.

His formal title is senior manager of proactive customer communications. But Mr. Taylor — 37, rail thin and mildly compulsive, by his own admission — spends his 12-hour work days finding out how Southwest disappointed its customers and then firing off homespun letters of apology.

[...]

He composes about 180 letters a year explaining what went wrong on particular flights and, with about 110 passengers per flight, he mails off roughly 20,000 mea culpas. Each one bears his direct phone line. [Emphasis mine]

Contrast this with my most recent problem with my internet/mobile phone provider, when I was told that the VP of Customer Service does not have a direct phone number or email address.But they were happy to give me the postal address so I could write my internet service provider a letter, obviously missing the irony.

Acknowledging a problem and offering an apology requires little effort, but makes a huge impact on a customer, probably be cause we hear it so infrequently. Doing it proactively is phenomenal.

Blatantly telling a customer that you can't be bothered to hear their problems is just stupid, and indicative of a market where there isn't enough competition. Companies that don't care about their customers don't deserve to have any.