Appalling customer service, and the attitude that customers just disturb the peace of the employees, is common in public-sector organizations, and some formerly in the public sector. There also seems to be a correlation between heavy trade union involvement and poor customer service.
And this is the responsibility of top management - if the top isn't interested in customer service (and this means actually doing something about it rather than spouting off and wringing there hands) then there will be problems through out the organisation.