PP,
Very often good customer service comes at a price.
To be frank, it means spending time with staff - monitoring and supervising and educating.
The UK in the past has not been good on customer service. In catering, for example, Europeans and Americans are much much better, albeit in different ways.
We are now improving significantly in many areas, particularly in speed of delivery.
But face-to-face is a problem, and as long as flying schools are in a race to the cheapest, then something has to give.
Spending money on training people how to be nice to paying customers just seems to be one of the first to go!
Yet there are positive examples out there from years back: take M&S who used to be real leaders in customer service, taking back goods without question etc. And were not the cheapest in the market.
But they too have suffered in the ever present pressures on costs.
Maybe it is not too surprising that the most poplular flying schools, restaurants etc are the family-run ones where the results of good customer service can be seen immediately on the bottom line. And can be seen to building a valuable business.
A flying school in rented premises with leased aircraft and "temporary" staff just waiting for a job on an airline is not building value. So just cut costs and take any profit while you can.
And that's the crux of the whole issue, I feel.