6 ms·

Go ahead, be rude. It will cost you $350k

57 points by redbell 4y ago

PaulHoule 4y ago
The first time I read the phrase "the customer is always right" was a book about aluminum produced by the Alcoa company when I was a kid. When I parrot this phrase to most people today they tell me the opposite is true, that any customer who isn't satisfied is an asshole and is doing you a favor if they switch to the competition. I remember reading a business book in the early 2000s that said as much and that you should be trying to fire your worst customers. Around that time my stockbroker fired me as a customer because I didn't trade enough and because when they invited me to a presentation on annuities I asked why I shouldn't buy I bonds from Treasury Direct. My reply to that is that there's a fine line between getting rid of your worst customers and getting rid of all your customers and it strikes me as another demented example of wishful hinking in "business as usual" like Best Buy's decision to stock a single Sony mirrorless camera body but not stock a selection of lenses to use with it.
- renewiltord 4y ago
  It's just an SNR problem with the phrase. The LTV of the customer needs to exceed the CAC plus COGS for that customer. And if you can't see that being the case, firing the customer is necessary. In many businesses this is hard to account for, but we can do this now. Hence AWS charging a premium for proper support. The interesting part of "the customer is always right" is that it moves one from the "this customer is idiot" default to the "what is this complaint telling me" and the notion that LTV isn't apparent at single interactions. So you optimize the marginal COGS down (including support, if necessary) using this as your bellwether, and try to keep in mind that LTV can be much higher than single support case cost. But if you use "customer is always right" to increase COGS and still leave LTV same you're making a mistake because you're conforming to the phrase over the function it has.
  - PaulHoule 4y ago
    The trouble with that is that the music in most people’s heads plays at too high a volume.
  - BizarroLand 4y ago
    "The customer is always right" is better read as, "Sell the customer what they want to buy (if you can)". That doesn't mean the customer gets to mistreat or assault your employees over the proximity of pickles to their hamburger patty when it was being cooked, but that if enough customers ask for more meat on their burger then you should offer a double or triple patty option.
    - renewiltord 4y ago
      Thanks. That's a useful interpretation to me.
- jmillikin 4y ago
  "The customer is always right" refers to the product design. If you sell shoes that you think are the best on the market, but customers think they're bad, the customer is always right. It helps direct attention toward selling what people want, not what you think they should want. Notably it does not mean that individual customers (or would-bes) are always justified in their complaints.
  - shizzy0 4y ago
    I believe the original phrase was, “The customer is always right in matters of taste.” It’s a shame that party got dropped.
- bradknowles 4y ago
  If you're always firing your worst customers, then sooner or later you won't have any customers left.
LinuxBender 4y ago
I have some anecdotal experience with this. I was at an Oracle event representing my company that managed Oracle for a very large number of customers. I met Larry. He treated me like I was an insignificant and why was I even talking to him. I considered that rude and highly dismissive. It became my goal to get our customers away from Oracle to which I had some success. Quite a few customers were able to move to MySQL which at the time was becoming more stable, more acid compliant and faster. We already had ridiculously fast hardware at that time anyway, not by today's standards. I would like to think it cost him at least a few of his racing yachts.
- genericone 4y ago
  Hell hath no fury like a customer scorned
  - anakaine 4y ago
    How about when you piss off an entire state for your unethical practices? IBM banned from QLD. 10 years in and there's still no IBM contract within the state government that I'm aware of. https://www.itnews.com.au/news/queenslands-ibm-ban-lives-on-420969 https://www.itnews.com.au/news/queenslands-ibm-ban-lives-on-...
- jasmer 4y ago
  Larry has all sorts of questionable qualities, and there are plenty of reasons to leave (or use) Oracle, but some person being arbitrarily dismissive isn't really one of them. Unless the dismissiveness was over something very material. "I would like to think it cost him at least a few of his racing yachts." - because the CEO/Director of a massive multinational conglomerate with 100 000 employees didn't arbitrarily have time for you? Also - and this may have nothing to do with your experience - but for some reason some people feel as though they have the 'right' to other people's attention. The more influence people have the more people come out of the woods with this. I do not envy anyone with an iota of influence or popularity, it's a constant stream of people demanding their focus, any one of which may or may not interpret something some way, or even take an actual real slight out of proportion. Also I find that people are bad at interpreting the state of mind of others. Of course it's probably a good thing to move away from Oracle anyhow ...
wildrhythms 4y ago
I worked in IT and was very thankful I had a manager that wouldn't put up with any bullshit from customers. Any kind of disrespect to the IT people would lead to the customer being chewed out and banned from getting our help. The manager gave us an open form to submit any such issues. We were encouraged to be transparent with customers about the issues, if the problem was out of our hands, what the delay is, etc. no bullshit. It made a shitty job a little less shitty I guess.
pvaldes 4y ago
Reminds me this interesting history (in Spanish, but many people here most probably will speak it) mostly about the experience of being sued by Arduino, but also telling the secondary history of how a big telecom lost all contracts to update to 4G in one entire country. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hw_q1Hjkuxo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hw_q1Hjkuxo
n4bz0r 4y ago
What could possibly make the support guy act like that? The only thing I can imagine is the support being accountable for sending out too many spares. But that shouldn't really be a phone guy's responsibility? The other thing that sticks out is that the support must normally have an idea what client they are talking to, it's not like the company would order 350 laptops one by one on different names. A $350k client tries to get a replacement for a $50 part? Better hold your ground! The story sounds like a fiction or a wet dream, but given how easy it is to underestimate the extent of idiocy, I'd say it's really hard to tell for sure. If the story is real, the vendor totally had it coming.
- renewiltord 4y ago
  Interesting. Then it's a tale of poor CRM, where you can't tie your support calls into the rest of customer flow. Could totally see that if look up support purely by SKU and serial without thing it into rest of CRM. Hmm. At a startup I worked, the only thing that kept "is this important" in mind was a rough list of importance in eng managers' heads. Definitely led to us misprioritizing customers.
  - rkagerer 4y ago
    Or you can strive to treat every customer like gold and reap the long term rewards of an impeccable reputation.
    - sdfhbdf 4y ago
      Agreed, word of mouth is a powerful marketing strategy
    - colechristensen 4y ago
      Eh. Some customers are shitty and very demanding. Most people don’t want to be in the business of pampering assholes, and plenty of people will take advantage of a business that will do anything to make literally everyone happy. Just go read some bad Yelp reviews of your favorite restaurant and ask yourself if all of those people really deserved to be treated differently.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
m00x 4y ago
"And then everybody clapped" This story could be true, but it smells so much like fabrication.
- SillyUsername 4y ago
  ^ This guy gets it
aaron695 4y ago
tinus_hn 4y ago
It’s not just about rudeness, nobody who buys thousands of laptops wants to deal with shitty support. If they try stuff like this and managements backs it up, you know there’s more like it in the future and it’s just not worth anyones time. Better to just wait a few years until that probably outsourced support department has been dumped before you try again.
larryliu 4y ago
The service department will adapt by always talking nice, always promising to service the products but never send or perform anything that costs money. When you finally reach the person in charge: - "sorry sir, but your request has been filtered by our revenue, cost and risk model, the model is automatic and I am unable to override it, would you please try making the request in another way" - "my request is totally legit, why does the model think it's risky?" - "sorry sir, the exact mechanism is confidential. I would recommend you proposing a solution that doesn't have substantial cost for us, or we can work together on this case for a win-win solution".

57 points by redbell 4y ago

The first time I read the phrase "the customer is always right" was a book about aluminum produced by the Alcoa company when I was a kid. When I parrot this phrase to most people today they tell me the opposite is true, that any customer who isn't satisfied is an asshole and is doing you a favor if they switch to the competition. I remember reading a business book in the early 2000s that said as much and that you should be trying to fire your worst customers. Around that time my stockbroker fired me as a customer because I didn't trade enough and because when they invited me to a presentation on annuities I asked why I shouldn't buy I bonds from Treasury Direct. My reply to that is that there's a fine line between getting rid of your worst customers and getting rid of all your customers and it strikes me as another demented example of wishful hinking in "business as usual" like Best Buy's decision to stock a single Sony mirrorless camera body but not stock a selection of lenses to use with it.

renewiltord 4y ago
It's just an SNR problem with the phrase. The LTV of the customer needs to exceed the CAC plus COGS for that customer. And if you can't see that being the case, firing the customer is necessary. In many businesses this is hard to account for, but we can do this now. Hence AWS charging a premium for proper support. The interesting part of "the customer is always right" is that it moves one from the "this customer is idiot" default to the "what is this complaint telling me" and the notion that LTV isn't apparent at single interactions. So you optimize the marginal COGS down (including support, if necessary) using this as your bellwether, and try to keep in mind that LTV can be much higher than single support case cost. But if you use "customer is always right" to increase COGS and still leave LTV same you're making a mistake because you're conforming to the phrase over the function it has.
- PaulHoule 4y ago
  The trouble with that is that the music in most people’s heads plays at too high a volume.
- BizarroLand 4y ago
  "The customer is always right" is better read as, "Sell the customer what they want to buy (if you can)". That doesn't mean the customer gets to mistreat or assault your employees over the proximity of pickles to their hamburger patty when it was being cooked, but that if enough customers ask for more meat on their burger then you should offer a double or triple patty option.
  - renewiltord 4y ago
    Thanks. That's a useful interpretation to me.
jmillikin 4y ago
"The customer is always right" refers to the product design. If you sell shoes that you think are the best on the market, but customers think they're bad, the customer is always right. It helps direct attention toward selling what people want, not what you think they should want. Notably it does not mean that individual customers (or would-bes) are always justified in their complaints.
- shizzy0 4y ago
  I believe the original phrase was, “The customer is always right in matters of taste.” It’s a shame that party got dropped.
bradknowles 4y ago
If you're always firing your worst customers, then sooner or later you won't have any customers left.

LinuxBender 4y ago

I have some anecdotal experience with this. I was at an Oracle event representing my company that managed Oracle for a very large number of customers. I met Larry. He treated me like I was an insignificant and why was I even talking to him. I considered that rude and highly dismissive. It became my goal to get our customers away from Oracle to which I had some success. Quite a few customers were able to move to MySQL which at the time was becoming more stable, more acid compliant and faster. We already had ridiculously fast hardware at that time anyway, not by today's standards. I would like to think it cost him at least a few of his racing yachts.

genericone 4y ago
Hell hath no fury like a customer scorned
- anakaine 4y ago
  How about when you piss off an entire state for your unethical practices? IBM banned from QLD. 10 years in and there's still no IBM contract within the state government that I'm aware of. https://www.itnews.com.au/news/queenslands-ibm-ban-lives-on-420969 https://www.itnews.com.au/news/queenslands-ibm-ban-lives-on-...
jasmer 4y ago
Larry has all sorts of questionable qualities, and there are plenty of reasons to leave (or use) Oracle, but some person being arbitrarily dismissive isn't really one of them. Unless the dismissiveness was over something very material. "I would like to think it cost him at least a few of his racing yachts." - because the CEO/Director of a massive multinational conglomerate with 100 000 employees didn't arbitrarily have time for you? Also - and this may have nothing to do with your experience - but for some reason some people feel as though they have the 'right' to other people's attention. The more influence people have the more people come out of the woods with this. I do not envy anyone with an iota of influence or popularity, it's a constant stream of people demanding their focus, any one of which may or may not interpret something some way, or even take an actual real slight out of proportion. Also I find that people are bad at interpreting the state of mind of others. Of course it's probably a good thing to move away from Oracle anyhow ...

wildrhythms 4y ago

I worked in IT and was very thankful I had a manager that wouldn't put up with any bullshit from customers. Any kind of disrespect to the IT people would lead to the customer being chewed out and banned from getting our help. The manager gave us an open form to submit any such issues. We were encouraged to be transparent with customers about the issues, if the problem was out of our hands, what the delay is, etc. no bullshit. It made a shitty job a little less shitty I guess.

pvaldes 4y ago

Reminds me this interesting history (in Spanish, but many people here most probably will speak it) mostly about the experience of being sued by Arduino, but also telling the secondary history of how a big telecom lost all contracts to update to 4G in one entire country. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hw_q1Hjkuxo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hw_q1Hjkuxo

n4bz0r 4y ago

What could possibly make the support guy act like that? The only thing I can imagine is the support being accountable for sending out too many spares. But that shouldn't really be a phone guy's responsibility? The other thing that sticks out is that the support must normally have an idea what client they are talking to, it's not like the company would order 350 laptops one by one on different names. A $350k client tries to get a replacement for a $50 part? Better hold your ground! The story sounds like a fiction or a wet dream, but given how easy it is to underestimate the extent of idiocy, I'd say it's really hard to tell for sure. If the story is real, the vendor totally had it coming.

renewiltord 4y ago
Interesting. Then it's a tale of poor CRM, where you can't tie your support calls into the rest of customer flow. Could totally see that if look up support purely by SKU and serial without thing it into rest of CRM. Hmm. At a startup I worked, the only thing that kept "is this important" in mind was a rough list of importance in eng managers' heads. Definitely led to us misprioritizing customers.
- rkagerer 4y ago
  Or you can strive to treat every customer like gold and reap the long term rewards of an impeccable reputation.
  - sdfhbdf 4y ago
    Agreed, word of mouth is a powerful marketing strategy
  - colechristensen 4y ago
    Eh. Some customers are shitty and very demanding. Most people don’t want to be in the business of pampering assholes, and plenty of people will take advantage of a business that will do anything to make literally everyone happy. Just go read some bad Yelp reviews of your favorite restaurant and ask yourself if all of those people really deserved to be treated differently.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

m00x 4y ago

"And then everybody clapped" This story could be true, but it smells so much like fabrication.

SillyUsername 4y ago
^ This guy gets it

aaron695 4y ago

tinus_hn 4y ago

It’s not just about rudeness, nobody who buys thousands of laptops wants to deal with shitty support. If they try stuff like this and managements backs it up, you know there’s more like it in the future and it’s just not worth anyones time. Better to just wait a few years until that probably outsourced support department has been dumped before you try again.

larryliu 4y ago

The service department will adapt by always talking nice, always promising to service the products but never send or perform anything that costs money. When you finally reach the person in charge: - "sorry sir, but your request has been filtered by our revenue, cost and risk model, the model is automatic and I am unable to override it, would you please try making the request in another way" - "my request is totally legit, why does the model think it's risky?" - "sorry sir, the exact mechanism is confidential. I would recommend you proposing a solution that doesn't have substantial cost for us, or we can work together on this case for a win-win solution".