FINALLY! There is someone in one of the nation’s monolithic service organisations who takes notice of disgruntled customers. Stand up Shane O’Riordain, of Royal Mail, and take a bow.

Shane is one of the good guys. But he is not some anonymous junior or middle manager who has gone above and beyond in the name of customer service. He is the managing director for communications, strategy, regulation and pricing for the Royal Mail Group. That is the whole shebang of the Post Office, Royal Mail and Parcel Force to you and I.

For instead of hiding behind faceless corporate teams or battle-axe secretaries, he responded in person when we contacted him after we had reached the edge of our rope over important documents posted from the USA but which had gone astray within the labyrinthine Royal Mail Group structure.

I will not bore you with the details (I would hate to further upset The Press website troll who the other day called me the world’s most boring columnist) as to why we were having a torrid time trying to track down the documents. But suffice to say it had got to that awful tearing-your-hair-out stage of trying to get a real person to take you seriously when all they want to do is fob you off by directing you to the Royal Mail website for a tortuous session of form filling.

As usual, when faced with lackadaisical customer service, I was ready to do some serious damage — having a rant would not cut it, frankly. The junior manager calmly took the sensible option and, through a bit of judicious research, found out our Shane’s contact details — and then did some serious damage to his keyboard by banging out one of those spitting-feathers emails that we all love to send but are extremely loathe to receive.

Not so Shane. Within ten minutes of the email disappearing into the ether, we got a personal message back apologising for the rubbish service we had had from his organisation and pledging an immediate investigation with a response back to us the following morning.

Well, go to the foot of our stairs! We were so shocked you could have knocked us off the bottom step with a feather — or a postage stamp, come to that. We could not get over it, so much so it prompted a ring-round to friends and family (“Guess what? We have found a corporate big cheese who talks to customers!”), sad people that we are.

Such a revelation was worthy of BBC News At Ten, 96-point headlines in national newspapers and going insanely viral on social media. “Boss speaks to customers, shock!”

Who on earth would have thought it?

For we have got so used to being told that Mr Chief Executive of Rip-Off Gas Plc does not talk to customers, or the customer-services director of Electricity-Con Ltd does not deal with customer complaints, that being treated with such courtesy and promptness by Shane and his merry band of helpers was like a breath — nay, a powerful blast — of fresh air.

And when they did call us with the findings of their investigation it was gratifying to know that they did not treat us as whiners and fob us off with mealy-mouthed, there-there platitudinous murmurings, but were keen to point out that our experience had exposed flaws in their processes — flaws that they were taking immediate steps to address, followed up by urgent retraining for relevant staff.

Blimey! It felt like winning the Lottery, with more than a few handstands in order, not to mention the cracking open of a bottle of bubbly — though not at the same time, obviously.

If this makes us sound as though we spend our life moaning about customer service — for it is not the first time I have had a rant about it through the pages of this august organ — we do not.

But like countless others we have become sick and tired of the big companies’ and public utilities’ supposed customer focus which involves pressing option three, listening to “our calls are important to us but please hold” recorded messages, followed by music on an interminable continuous loop, and call-centre staff who cannot or will not deviate from the script in front of them.

No wonder small victories have us running round in giddy circles. So thank you Shane – you are one in a million.