Exhibit A: a big Australasian bank says it no longer forces staff to flog debt to customers “because we’ve done a lot of research into what our customers want and that’s resulted in a shift in focus to relate more to customers’ needs than to sales.”
What kind of special person fails to spot that customers have always had needs, and have always quite liked having them met? Did they think the world was full of nothing but wimps, masochists and ascetic monks? Why only now get around to asking customers what they want? Whose pockets did they think the revenue was coming out of? The Money Fairy’s? Did they not feel they owed customers anything in return for all that booty?
Exhibit B: the CEO who, when questioned about why they’d put prices up when they’d just posted a record profit, suggested the media ignore the queues of disgruntled customers and look instead to the smirking shareholders. I won’t even bother to point out all the research that demonstrates that companies who put their customers first deliver better returns over time for their shareholders. (Honestly, there is so much evidence about this that it’s stored in a warehouse just like the one at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark. Truly.)
Exhibit C: companies who think changing a logo will make people like them better. I can count recent new logos for an electronics chain, three banks, a power company and a telecommunications company. Has a new logo fundamentally changed how those places operate? What they offer you and how they treat you?
If not why not?
And why put up with it?
