"The Quality of What We Do"

I am borrowing the title of the post from a graphic at Creating Passionate Users, as well as the graphic and a few of Kathy Sierra's words.

I hopped to CPU from The Shifted Librarian and Jenny Levine's remarks about her experiences with using Virtual Reference services. The comments show the spectrum of opinions among librarians (and why do people who disagree often have to be snarky??). So, seeing the graphic at CPU (below) was fitting. I am not singling out VR but I do agree with the CPU post that there's a disconnect between what "we" (and "we" are any companies with users, not just libraries) think of services we provide and what our users experience and think.

Kathy writes:
"When I hear comments like, 'You wasted all that space to say, "Care about your customers"', I wonder why we don't. Or rather, I wonder why we all say we care about them, yet our actions reflect a more selfish view. When it comes to our users/customers... I don't think they think what we think they think.
It's similar to all those other statistics you hear about, like that way more than 50% of the population rate themselves 'Above Average' in everything from looks to smarts. We think our customers generally love us, although of course we're not perfect, but then... who is? Sure we have a few issues, but we're working on it. And besides, we're so much better than the competition."

Read the rest of the post. And then discuss. Your 500 word essay is due September 15.