Customer Service

I want to thank Christopher Reynolds for such a well-written, engaging story about the San Francisco Ferry Building ["Cornucopia by the Bay," Aug. 16]. I love the place and hope we will soon have a venue like it. It looks as if a waiter at Taylor's is gonna get a talking-to by management if they care about customer service. Dick Mason Redondo Beach

Re: David Lazarus' consumer column "After fire, burned by customer service," Oct. 18: DirectTV has some very big gaps in its customer service. It is disappointing that a company whose board of directors includes former visionaries John Malone (Liberty Media, AT&T) and Greg Maffei (Microsoft) can fall so short, second only to Paul Allen's Charter Communications. Why have we allowed the most important path of communication to become so poorly run? Kenneth A. Deans La Canada Flintridge :: The first thing to understand about "customer service" is that the term itself is a grave misnomer.

U.S. airline delays in November fell for the third consecutive month as carriers took steps such as canceling flights rather than let late-arriving planes clog airports. The on-time arrival rate was 80%, up from 77% a year earlier, according to a U.S. Transportation Department report Thursday. "It looks like the airlines are acting more proactively to the snowstorms," said Jack Kies, who oversaw national airspace for the Federal Aviation Administration.

They must be slapping themselves on their backs at the Texas headquarters of Container Store Inc., retailer of boxes, shelves and other "storage solutions." For when Alex Frankel, the author of "Punching In," tried to get a job at Container Store by posing as a storage fanatic, he failed to get past the first interview.

McDonald's Corp., the world's biggest restaurant chain, plans to add specialty coffee counters in as many as 14,000 U.S. stores in coming years to serve frappes, lattes and cappuccinos, the company said. Remodeling restaurants and adding equipment to prepare the beverages will cost as much as $100,000 per restaurant, but sales are expected to add $1 billion to annual revenue, the company said. McDonald's increased U.S. coffee sales by 39% in the first nine months of 2007 after introducing a stronger blend in 2006 to compete with Starbucks Corp.

Pizza Hut has deployed a mobile ordering system that ratchets up the competition in the industry's battle to sell more pizzas using the latest technology. The unit of Yum Brands Inc. has introduced new cellphone services that let customers order from any of its 6,200 outlets nationwide via text message or the mobile Web. The top U.S. pizza delivery chains -- Domino's Pizza Inc., Pizza Hut and Papa John's International Inc. -- have invested in online and mobile ordering as a way to boost sales in one of the restaurant industry's most competitive segments.

Helen Nunci went to the Disney Institute looking for inspiration on how to create winning personal touches at the island retreat she runs, beyond the hand-lettered welcome cards she props on pillows and the playful antics of her staff. Nunci's business isn't in the resort industry: It's the Veterans Administration hospital in Puerto Rico, the busiest in the U.S. military system, with 66,000 patients a year, many of them returning wounded from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The next time Domino's Pizza tells you a pie is on the way, they might be able to prove it. Pizza Tracker, available at 3,200 stores in the pizza chain, gives customers up-to-the-minute updates on the progress of their order, from the moment it is processed at the store to when the pie is boxed and sent out for delivery. The service is available to customers who order by phone or online. Domino's aims to offer the service in more than 90% of its 5,000 U.S. stores within a few months to compete with Papa John's and Pizza Hut for Internet-savvy customers who expect faster delivery.

Karl Goetz looked at his Prada-branded cellphone Friday morning and saw a message he had never seen before. "Rejected connection." It was another way of saying his high-end phone was suddenly as useful for making calls as a pair of Prada pumps. But fashion was not to blame. The problem was with the premium cellphone service Voce, which mysteriously shut down Friday.

Sharon Vaughan had been warned that cellphone reception was notoriously bad in this wealthy Central Coast town of art boutiques and touristy shops selling pottery and seashells. But the reality of cellularless living didn't really sink in until she moved to her first apartment in town two years ago. "The only place I could get a call out was on a wooden deck outside my apartment," said Vaughan, a restaurant manager at Cambria Pines Lodge.