Customer Service?

I thought this would be obvious. I mean, y'know, you'd think it'd be obvious - giving good customer service results in more business. No, I don't mean "the customer is always right" kind of customer service - sometimes the customer is patently wrong, and needs to be told so. I mean good, intelligent, responsive customer service.
For example: calling your customers back when they're trying to patronize your business! We needed some home repair work done (replacing the fascia behind the rear gutter, and re-attaching the gutter. Oh yeah, and do it without ripping the phone wire out, which is right underneath the gutter. In fact, the gutter would currently be resting on the wire if we hadn't propped it up.) so we called the guy we've dealt with in the past for similar home repairs. He'd always done a good job, and the charges were reasonable, so we felt fairly confident in calling him.
Kev left a message on his machine (the usual practice) and we waited for a callback to make an appointment.
And waited.
And Kev called again.
And we waited.
We waited two weeks and didn't hear a thing. Finally, this past Saturday, I looked in the Yellow Pages, saw a listing for "General Contractor" in our town, and called them. Explained the gutter situation to the real live person (NOT an answering machine) on the other end of the line, who said she'd pass along the information and we could expect a call back to set up an appointment to check the situation out and get an estimate.
Less than one HOUR later, we got a call, he came out and checked out the gutter, gave us an estimate and said he'd be out either Tuesday or Wednesday, and he'd call the night before to let us know which it'd be.
Yeah, guess who we'll call next time we need home repairs done. And guess who just lost our business - forever.
Seriously, if you're not accepting new business right now, or you're on vacation, or just aren't going to return calls for a month, say so on your machine. If you're so overbooked you couldn't get to us till December, call us back to say so! Don't leave your potential customers hanging! I mean, really, if you can't be bothered to even call back to confirm an appointment, with someone who's seeking YOU out and wanting to give you money, I have to wonder how much you can be bothered to QC your work after it's been paid for. Nope, not going to call you anymore, dude. Bye, bye, former contractor guy.

Schott Construction, you have MY business for being professional, for being there, for promptly returning calls. Next time we need home repair / general contracting done, we're calling YOU GUYS the FIRST time, so we don't need to look for a "second time".