Yes, Yes, Yes! Actually, No!
June 28th, 2007
There is a famous saying in hospitality:
“The answer is yes, now what’s the question?”
The sentiment behind this is that the customer is always right. The customer has a need that requires fulfilling. There are many companies that follow this customer-orientated ethic. Starbucks is one, as no drink is ever not made no matter how crazy the concoction may be. If that’s the way they want it, then that’s the way they get it.
In the corporate world, and in particular financial services, there are several companies that try and maintain a business model that revolves around this attitide. However, at which point does corporate responsibility take over? In many instances in business the customer is not the best person to ask for direction or opinion. In fact, they are absolutely the worst person to ask.
Customers should have an end goal and how that end goal is reached should be down to the service provider on how it can be best achieved. This is the basis of good business. It’s a Win/Win situation.
There are some business relationships that, from the beginning, that it is clear that it is going to be a Lose/Lose situation. Why do we enter these?
Have you knowingly entered any of these before and has the outcome been different to how you expected?
July 27th, 2007 at 4:12 am
We can draw a parallel here with democratic impulses more widely construed. If knowledge is knowledge (here described as knowledge of how to satisfy an indentified consumer need) then the consent of said customer (or demoi) is entirely superfluous to the process. This is the trade-off between expert knowledge and democracy described by Plato in the Republic; needless to say, Plato was no fan of democracy either. But here’s the problem. The model described above takes an atomistic idea of an individual customer with a pre-established system of preferences or needs as a given starting point. However, in business, just as in politics, this model is fallacious. It is through the process of deliberation and interaction that both consumers and producers become aware of said preferences and needs, which are not static. I’m not suggesting for a moment that the customer is always right - far from it - but it’s not satisfactory to say that they are never right, either. It is the tension between expert and democratic forms of knowledge that provides the momentum for systems of imformation exchange.