I find that I receive the most memorable service from the smaller retail sector that includes home businesses, small shops and the like, whereas large industries become depersonalised in their approach.

Customer service is great with some international I mean multinational Credit card companies and not as great with some banking industires.

Financial Services probably offers the best since they want your money. Telecom companies are faced with stiff competition and financial issues so they try to cut costs and therefore are the worst I've dealt with, especially since they have you captive with the 2 year contracts!

The best CS that I have received is from companies that have the same personal experience as the customer. For example: health related research, fundraising, and non profit institutions. Those that are lucky enough to be a monopoly have the take it or leave it attitude and unfortunately, have given the public a lower expectation of their CS since they have positioned themselves with an inelastic market advantage.

Typically I find that utilities are poor providers (given they are in a position where you have to use them) and small companies (who have to rely on word of mouth and referral) offer excellent service.

Good to excellent service is provided by companies who understand how service adds value to their business model.
Bad service is provided by companies who have failed to see how service adds value to the companies future growth and profitability.
Worst service is provided by 1) Mobile Phone companies, 2) Credit Card companies, 3) Internetservice Providers and 3) IT Software companies.

The Financial sector as a whole does a pretty good job. I may not always agree with their policies or results, but the experience tends to suit my needs. The service industry, especially automotive, has a lot of area for opportunity. You often do not have real-time access to information and there is frequently inconsistencies in the information provided. I imagine this stems from the fact that service companies tend to be smaller regionalized organizations. As such, they may not have the capital to invest in automating and standardizing their service offering. Which means the quality of their customer service is contingent upon the mood or quality of the person you speak to.

I am not sure you can break this down by sector - it depends on the company. Quality apparel retailers and higher end financial service providers seem to do pretty well with service. Poor service seems to be commonplace with utilities - cell phones, cable TV providers, etc.

technical support industries have to step it up a level in knowledge, response time, all major SLA related requirements, the usual players, credit card companies, financial institutions, travel constantly have service related issues from customers

telecom service providers are best and banking sector are the worst.

Wow, I guess banks lately have given good customer service, and the areas really lacking are technical support.

My personal opinion is that most banking industries, especially the Credit Card ones, are still struggling with providing great service. This would be the case with about half of the major mobile phone carriers and Cable/Satellite companies as well. I think the Health Industry has it down pretty well, not perfect, but better than the others.

One of the most poor is the Medical field. Their billing is complicated and rarely correct. This causes the patient to spend valuable time debating charged. The Gambling industry "gets" the value of service. They go above and beyond to have their patrons be repeat customer.

IT Technical Support; Brokerage and Investment companies and credit card companies give the best service in my opinion. Health Care services from very large insurand providers have room for improvement.

Though not intuitive, banks provide the best and airlines provide the worst.