Andie and I bought a new sofa today. (All right, Andie did all the talking and I sat on the sofa we were purchasing tweeting.) It was not a terribly exciting process, though the fact that in twelve weeks (three months!) we're getting a comfy new sofa bed to put in our living room and replace the not-quite-as-comfy-as-it-should-be-and-slightly-stained-sofa we currently have is pleasing. Later on, we went to Nando's for dinner.

I provide these details for context on what I'm going to discuss today, which is the concept of "customer service" as it stands in 2012.

When you're looking for a good experience at a shop or restaurant, you generally want several things: to not be hassled, to get help when you need it, and to resolve any transactions involved in the encounter as quickly as possible. Ideally, we'd have an RPG shop setup, where you walk in, select the items you want and walk out again a few thousand gold pieces lighter. Unfortunately, it doesn't quite work like that as sooner or later you'll have to deal with people.

Or, more accurately, salespeople or waiting staff. I provide this distinction because interacting with one of these people is, a lot of the time, a very frustrating experience. This is largely due to the fact that they inevitably have some sort of "script" to follow and are obliged to mention certain things. In the case of the sofa salesman today, we had the spiel about the five-year stain protection, the "Special Cream" that we needed to take care of our new acquisition, the special things they could put on the feet to make it easier to move because sofas don't have castors these days, and all manner of other shenanigans. In the case of the Nando's waiting staff, we received our meals and within a minute of picking up our cutlery were already being asked if our food was all right.

Now don't get me wrong, I'd rather have attentive staff ready to put things right if necessary, but when it feels like you're talking to a robot it often has the opposite sort of effect. While we were going through the purchasing process for the sofa, every step was punctuated with a "I'm just going to tell you about the slightly more expensive leather you could have on it/the five-year protection plan/the Special Cream/the fact you should wipe it with a cloth every so often" when all I really wanted him to do was say "You want this? Fine. Sign here," and be done with it. When I'm eating a meal, I just want to eat it rather than deal with someone buzzing around my ears asking if everything's all right. If something's not all right, I'll make sure you know about it, chum.

It's a fine line to tread, and one which not many retailers have quite got right just yet. The Apple Store probably comes the closest, since its Specialists are generally quite happy to have a natural-ish conversation with any customers in attendance, but they're still obliged to mention the various services that the store offers — AppleCare, One to One, the Genius Bar and the like — meaning there's always that slight element of roboticness there. They're better than most, though, and can usually pick up on when you're in a hurry and just want to choose something, give them extortionate amounts of money and get out before you decide that yes, that new iPad with the retina display really is very shiny and something that you want more than anything else in the world.

It's difficult to know exactly how this question of "human" customer service can be resolved. Clearly, scripting employees' conversations is not the way to go. That way lies the Path of the Telemarketer, and we all know how well-received those phone calls usually are. But if you leave people to their own devices to handle interactions, you get the sullen, grumpy, silent assistants who work in places like Primark and Dorothy Perkins. (To be fair, I can empathise; I'd be sullen, grumpy and silent if I worked somewhere like that.)

What needs to be taken into account to provide the best possible customer service, then, is the person themselves. When hiring someone to fulfil a customer-facing role, employers shouldn't be looking for someone who can recite scripts from memory. They should be looking for someone who can develop a rapport with their customers; someone who makes people walk away from that shop or restaurant thinking "wow, I really liked that person, I'm glad they helped me."

That takes time and effort, though, and a lot of customer service roles are seen as a relatively low tier in the hierarchy of an organisation — meaning that said time and effort isn't always expended on finding the best possible people. Perhaps it should be, though — corporate culture and business-speak may be overly prevalent in society, but that doesn't mean it's a particularly positive development. After all, who would you rather buy an expensive thing from — someone who appears inherently trustworthy, friendly and knowledgeable; or someone who can recite a finance agreement from memory?