Networks are powerful things. It doesn't matter if you reject Metcalfe's Law (that says the value of a network is in proportion to the square of its size) as inflated, or Sarnoff's Law, or Reed's Law, or any other law — as Galileo supposedly whispered before his death, "Eppur si muove!" (and yet it moves!). The Internet, and especially formal and informal social networks (such as YouTube, Bebo, Facebook, MySpace or Gawker), ensure that any mistake a company makes, at any time and in any place, will become fodder for the daily regiment of trivia, pique and vented spleen.

What does this mean for customers? Well, it means cable technicians can't fall asleep on the couch. It means customer service representatives cannot berate the customer for dropping service. It means that when a customer calls a bank in the U.S. to drop a credit card, the bank doesn't scare him or her (for example, "Life's circumstances can change in an instant, and although you have not used the card in seven years, there may come a time when it is the only protection you have").

Customers are recording you, videotaping you, uploading and downloading you, and scrutinizing and berating you - in front of millions of people, at zero cost to them. It is no longer one to one to one: one letter of complaint in, one letter of "sorry and tough luck" back. Customers will no longer bother with the complaint letter. They will simply pass the experience on to a friend.

Until now, we have been firing the "bad" employee. Why fire the employee? Who hired them, trained them and coached them? Are we firing them because they followed protocol or got frustrated at the company's awful policies and practices? If you really want change to happen - and you should - begin scrutinizing how the processes were created that got you into this position in the first place. Although it is much simpler to blame the agent, they are likely the symptom, not the cause of the problem.

We don't see this situation getting better; we do see it becoming more severe. What is your strategy?

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I know exactly what everyone is talking about first hand about this subject. NetSuite does not cater to Small business as they claim. Once you buy the expensive product they want you to pay a arm and a leg for some decent customer service help. I bought this product for my business because a friend that works their swore by it. Well the product is ok their SalesForce is great as well. But when I heard their Director of Customer Support say "we don't care if they have problems all the better, they need to buy Gold Support and we will care to look at their cases then" truly upset me when I went to a Netsuite function a while back and heard this from their directors mouth. If that is the modo of Netsuite maybe their CEO needs to fire and get someone in their Customer Support Department that can have a clearer way of doing business. I hope this is not his way or Netsuites philosphy of customer satisfaction and support. It's asham they have people in high positions that might lead their customer reps in this direction of thinking. Get your act or at least your Customer Service Department together Netsuite. Cheerios to the person who wrote the original posting on this subject, I truly agree on nipping it from the bud of the problem the customer service reps look up to their supervisors to be mentored not become intoxicated by this means of supervision.