Waiting until the next day is hardly providing poor customer service. If there are weather problems which force the cancellation of multiple flights by multiple airlines, and the flights later that day are full and other planes are out of position, what exactly do you expect them to do? Buy another plane and rush it in just for you? The planes are already filled with existing passengers and airlines can not afford to have multiple extra planes hanging around in the event of a once every few months weather issue.
The article mentions Southwest as an airline to emulate but alas they do not protect on other airlines either, so that argument does not hold much water.
Unless airfares go up significantly and enough people are willing to pay the high prices--thus making it profitable to fly with 65%-75% of the seats filled--it will be impossible for airlines to accommodate everybody immediately on the next flight in an irrops situation caused by weather. There are simply too few available seats as necessitated by relatively high costs to operate an airline and relatively low fares paid for the seat on average.