Slashdot Mirror
When Customer Dissatisfaction Is a Tech Business Model
jammag writes: A new trend has emerged where tech companies have realized that abusing users pays big. Examples include the highly publicized Comcast harassing service call, Facebook "experiments," Twitter timeline tinkering, rude Korean telecoms — tech is an area where the term "customer service" has an Orwellian slant. Isn't it time customer starting fleeing abusive tech outfits?
Don't worry guys, the free market fairy will take care of it.
"Twitter timeline tinkering" is abusive? That's a bit of a stretch.
Where are customers supposed to flee to? Many of these companies are de facto monopolies in many areas or at the very least in lock-step with their "competitors." There aren't very many choices for tech companies unless you want to do without, which is unpalatable for many.
There's nowhere else to go, and they know that.
The only way to flee is to have an alternative. And despite all of the wanna-bes, there are no real quality alternatives.
Required comment: the big corps have won. Deal with it.
big company:
bend over and take it.
small aspiring company:
what do you want? what can we do for you?
At least in the case of Facebook and Twitter, users and customers are largely a disjoint set.
When it comes to getting free stuff on the net, I'm not too sympathetic.
When it comes to getting service you're paying for, then I'm a little more perturbed.
I've made personal choices to avoid companies that have dissatisfied me in the past - Bank of America and AT&T, for example, will not get one red cent from me as long as I live. But Facebook and twitter? You get what you pay for.
I wonder how many people actually know when they are being screwed over by tech?
Remember, if something is free you aren't the customer, you are the product and so long as they're not pissing off their advertisers these companies can do anything that doesn't significantly reduce their user counts.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
One of the biggest reasons cites are falling over themselves to get Google Fiber in, and many small towns are creating their own networks, is because of the deep seething hatred everyone has for Comcast.
(If at first you don't succeed, do it different next time!)
Cable companies are granted "franchises" in most cities. If you want fast internet net you have no choice.
Add to the fact that we have been in a race to the bottom for customer service for a long time. You average slashdot reader calls anything that is available cheaper from china on Ebay over priced.
The constantly want free as in beer software.
And yet complain over bad customer support.
Back in the long dark history of computers I worked in a computer store. We had a large margin on the computers so we took the time help people learn how to use them. Today their is probably $10 margin on your typical PC and yet you wonder why companies farm out support.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
...they are the product. Need more repeating?
Here is how to do better than all the other companies out there.
Ask you customers what they want. Then give them exactly what they need (not to be confused with what you think they need). Also do it in a semi timely manner.
Why do we put with abuse is because usually the alternative companies out there are as bad or worse.
For example take blockbuster. Once the king of renting movies. They ignored their customers saying 'I want it cheap and I want convenient'. It is why redbox and netflix destroyed them. Blockbuster thought helping the customer was how high can the jack up the per night rate and then pick up more on the back end if you are 1 second late. Pretty much within 3-5 years of a better service coming along they were gone. If they had got ahead of netflix in renting and returning and ahead of redbox on price/locations they probably could have stuck around. By the time they figured it out it was too late.
Don't worry guys, the free market fairy will take care of it.
The free market has taken care of it. Good customer service is expensive. Consumers have demonstrated that they are unwilling to pay additional money for good customer service. Successful companies have aborted customer service to keep prices low.
Take a well established idea and do it with a computer. The 'profit by pissing off your customers' model was well established in the auto industry in the 70's.
Right after the BP oil spill, I stood outside my house and watched cars go into an AM/PM for gas. Right across the road was a Shell (not that Shell is innocent or anything). I thought to myself "BP just did a Bad Thing, why are people buying from AM/PM? It says 'part of BP' right on the sign!"
Perhaps it was habit? Perhaps it was that the gas was 5cents cheaper a gallon?
This still bugs me to this day. Five cents a gallon, with each person having approximately a 10-15gal tank.. They couldn't or wouldn't spend 50-75 cents to send a message.
There are already a lot of posts saying "where would they go to?". I get that. I do. But we still need to pull our heads out of our (not so) collective asses. There is only one thing that a company fears, and that is a drop in profit. As long as it's profitable to take advantage of us, they will. It's not THAT much effort to be a conscious consumer. People have been doing it with food. They just need to extend it to other things.
...FREE!
When I was a kid, I learned the signs of desperation...bad customer service and expiring food...the first sign of any store going south. All the companies that had success, treated their customers with respect and didn't do any pennypicking. The first sign is ALWAYS pennypicking, the second sign is worker efficiency followed by unhappy overworked workers. The third and last sign, is when they're lashing out on their customer base, trying to fault the customers instead of their products - simply because they can't afford to fix it (and basically because we wanted cheap stuff for free to begin with).
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
big company:
bend over and take it.
small aspiring company:
what do you want? what can we do for you?
It's more that the small ones say "please" when asking you to bend over.
And no, I don't think they abused their "product" either. They did what they always do--show people things selectively to elicit a response. Usually it's called "advertising." In this case called it "research."
The Daddy casts sleep on the Baby. The Baby resists!
Or did you not know what you're talking about?
Capitalist
Agrarian
Artisan
No Facebook account (and blocked in DNS), no Twitter account (also blocked in DNS), not a subscriber of a Korean telecom, not a Comcast subscriber, switched providers when German Telekom failed to provide timely service to a business which I supported. Not using Chrome, not using Google apps on my phone, not shopping at Amazon. Going to quit Slashdot if they force Beta on me.
I see Apple is conspicuously absent from that list. Apple with the free customer support (Genius Bar) that doesn't try to sell you stuff. Apple, the company that doesn't really care if you want to use their cloud services as long as you buy their hardware.
I also notice they have a few dozen billion dollars in cash lying around. Enough to support operations for several years even if they suddenly lost all revenue - which isn't going to happen anytime soon. And did I hear something about a new "spaceship" central campus? Clearly good customer service actually pays off pretty well.
Most comcast customers have no choice but to get comcast for cable internet and they know it...
Companies that lie to customers should be sued. Terms of service do not excuse lying.
You can't sue them as you agreed not to in the click-through EULA.
Binding Arbitration is a power grab by the corporates to enable them be bad actors
TFA is just (1) relating generic "corporations skimp on trying for perfectly happy customers", with no data suggesting it's a more profitable model; and (2) some blog post whining about A/B data, which is really just observation of users in A/B situations then hypothesizing the effects of A/B.
So yeah, another "FACEBOOK FORCED ME TO BE HAPPY/SAD" post. Feel free to accuse me too, reading my post surely forced you to feel X.
Companies want happy customers. Happy customers don't complain. Complaints waste time and time is money.
When I worked as a chief-level officer in my last company, it was a common subject between the CEO and me that "99% of our complaints come from 10% of our customer base, and they are the lowest spenders in the first place." Our product was Business-to-Business, so when a company placed a $50K order, they'd turn around and get a calculated $250K return on it within the month and place another $50K order the next month. Orders that size basically printed money. The guys that would spend $800 wouldn't see a large ROI (because they only invested $800, which nobody notices) and they would come back and bitch about EVERYTHING.
So from a big-business perspective: Who wants the guy that wastes your company's time bitching and moaning to the point of being a net negative on your revenue? Let the complainers leave. Some of them will come back because they'll just bitch about the next company as well and return as the prodigal son, but quieter and (hopefully) more respectful. As long as their tantruming doesn't upset the millions you're putting into advertising.
" Isn't it time customer starting fleeing abusive tech outfits?"
Sure, would love to move. Where do you want me to go, Boardwalk or Park Place?
I too dislike Comcast, my only option for non-dial-up internet (other than my cell provider, which I find myself preferring despite awful speeds & device limits).
But what options do I have? I can't bring my money elsewhere. Protesting in the USA has been deadly lately. So I'm encouraging the Comcast-TimeWarner merger. TW was just as bad when I lived in their monopoly. With 55% of the US forced into 1 very bad company, either:
- Enough people will wake up & complain to matter
- The US will no-longer be the place to have tech business, and then MAYBE regulators won't be able to ignore the economy getting trashed.
- Someone will talk about Monopoly sanctions like when AT&T had to share their lines.
The best (most profitable) customer is the one that can be bullied into puting up with your bullshit. The demanding ones, the ones who know how the service should work and cause trouble when it doesn't measure up are worth getting rid of.
Thank you, sir. May I have another?
Have gnu, will travel.
By "our times" you mean last 200,000 years, right? When do or did humans not want everything for free?
I don't like Facebook. I don't use Facebook (despite pressure). But that doesn't mean I think Facebook's publicised test was abusive. It was a standard A/B test, done by website owners everywhere, all the time, from the smallest to the largest. If you reword it slightly, all the negative connotations vanish:
Users seemed to enjoy the newsfeed more when we adjusted the filter algorithm to prefer positive (rather than negative) content.
Said this way it sounds just like any other test (Google changing their rankings, an advertiser tweaking their wording), and that's because it is. Communication is about changing someone's thoughts and emotions... that's the definition of communication at the most basic level. Just because Facebook can quantify these changes and put them into numeric form does not mean that the changes they made are any more ominous that any other advertising message ever made since the dawn of time.
"I will trust Google to 'do no evil' until the founders no longer run it." Hello Alphabet.
You don't have to put up with jerks.
For almost every crap business, there's a competitor that isn't crap. Find them.
You lost me. What is free in this case? Customers are paying massive fees for lousy service -- please explain where the free is.
Note: this is not about the Comcast-advertisers relationship. But if it was, it is safe to say advertisers are not happy with Comcast.
To sum up, no one is getting anything for free in this case, and no one is happy (except Comcast, because they are a monopoly provider in the markets they dbi). So this is a monopoly issue, not a "sucker, you're the product" issue.
I come here for the love
Spirit Airlines was the most profitable US airline (per flight) in 2013. They also had 30% more customer complaints than any other airline.
Most of the other comments are screaming about monopolies, but the airline industry is pretty competitive. American consumers really just don't care about customer service.
I guess no one heard of call center's policies to give in only if caller stays on the phone for longer than x amount of minutes?
When I worked for Radio Shack (back when it was two words) our leaders had a saying... "Take care of the pennies and the dollars will take care of themselves." Now look at the situation they are in and it can be attributed to exactly that - pennypicking then workers screwing around because they weren't getting paid/trained followed now by the few that are actually still employed having to do the jobs of the people who got fired/left because they don't pay enough because they are too worried about saving a penny here and a penny there and not spending money for training and customer service skills.
I cannot be the only person that read that as Nude Korean telecoms vs. Rude Korean telecoms. That's a whole different aspect of abuse.
The "free market" rewards greed in all forms. It is intended to reward these behaviors.
The entire purpose of capitalism is to turn the greed in human nature into a force of productivity. But the side effect is that it rewards that greed. One of the only things that can keep that greed in check is regulation. But that has a side effect of creating a separate power base and thus regulatory capture and barriers to entry and so on. So what's the next step? How do we watch the watchers? We need a new framework for productivity but I am confident we can find it. Civilization and democracy has reliably marched forward. The world has (mostly) ended slavery, brought reading and writing to the masses, eradicated diseases, put a man on the moon, and so on.
This science of "how much the consumer will endure" is not limited to tech companies -- nor even customers. This is the approach of the corporation to all matters, legal, financial, PR, lobbying, etc. Anyone who thinks otherwise is naive. Sure there are a few good corporations, and some acts of altruism and benevolence. But the "free market" rewards greed.
So we need a new framework for productivity, and we need to start looking now.
Interesting any industry feels it can run with a hands off mode towards the customer.
long time ago, a slashdotter cut right to the chase when he posted "Microsoft is not a software company. they are an abuse company. they utilize software to inflict their abuse." somebody tore down the copy I had hanging next to the copier, so alas, I cannot credit the statement properly. easily 10 years ago, and it hasn't changed since.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
Isn't it time customer starting fleeing abusive tech outfits? Mate I dumped all these sites long ago, Its just the twit generation who are gullible enough to enjoy these rubbish services. Bloody brain dead clone generation!!!
The free market fairy's powers only work in actual free markets. A cable or phone company with a government-mandated monopoly is not part of a free market.
Isn't it time customer starting fleeing abusive tech outfits?
Fleeing to where? Some other company where the service is just as bad or worse?
I'm currently displeased with T-Mobile and the lies they told me about their "no overages fees" promise. I walked into AT&T and asked "how much to put your SIM in my phone?"
"$20 a month for 300Mb data, unlimited talk/text". Oh, ok!
"Plus $25/month to use a phone with that service." WTF? You can buy a service that requires a phone and then charge EXTRA to be able to use a phone with it? MY own phone, to boot?
I could understand if you were adding additional devices to the service (two phones sharing one plan, e.g.). I could understand a charge to get a phone from them. But I consider it dishonest to separate out the plan from any devices that you need to have to use that service. It makes the cost look artificially low.
$20/month! Great deal. $45/month, not so good anymore.
Adding in that they charge for texts coming through the email to SMS gateway despite being "unlimited text", the service was more expensive for less product. I could choose to send a message to T-Mobile but it would wind up costing me more per month, and I have no reason to believe that AT&T's customer service is any better than T-Mobile's.
So, it is likely that the idea of fleeing companies with bad customer service would only result in increased thrashing as 100 people move from company A to company B and 100 move from B to A, and 200 people find out that neither one is any good at helping them, and 200 people find out that they couldn't get as good a deal at their new provider as they had at the old.
There is also the issue of the devil you know vs. the one you don't. AT&T may have better service, but they probably don't, and I already know how bad T-Mobile is. Changing providers for no benefit, added cost, and potentially no better service is a lose for me and T-Mobile probably wouldn't even notice.
A new trend has emerged where tech companies have realized that abusing users pays big.
How do we use this?
Yeah, but this is a bit different though. Most tech companies have a monopoly. Google owns the mobile front. Apple owns their cult. Cable companies own everything :P... Microsoft owns the desktop.
If you want to shop at a different store they usually carry the same products. But switching between Apple and Windows isn't always so easy. They know you're not going to bother to learn something new.
Cable companies are often the only choice. I live in Iowa and the difference between a town with several choices and another town with one cable company, and no other high speed interenet choice is stunning. Same company, but completely different service.
there is no counterpoint to be made here...just because **some** actions by companies are marginally less abusive/manipulative means nothing.
and you're assuming we know all that Twitter, f/b have done has been made public, which is a foolish assumption
why can't /. just have consensus on this blatantly obvious issue? it IS manipulation and abuse...splitting hairs to make a counterpoint actually negates any benefit your comment may have had
we need to learn to speak with one voice...if we do we **run the industry** because we **do the work**
Thank you Dave Raggett
I like that it seems there is a loose consensus here on /. about this issue...so what's the next step?
we must destroy all abusive companies
We're not just random consumers...the people who post here are the people who ***do the work*** and it's time we speak up...or speak up more.
We need to tell *everyone* that "customer dissatisfaction is a tech business model"...we need to talk about it at the water cooler, to our children, to our golfing/WoW/fantasy sports buddies...when we set up a router for a neighbor...
we need to make it common knowledge to everyone that this is what's happening...i'm not saying go full "Jerry McGuire" but within the margins of realism, we need to let companies know that *we know their game and are working to stop them*
***AND START OUR OWN COMPANIES TO COMPETE***
Thank you Dave Raggett
Or how about: Consumers are UNABLE to pay additional money for good customer service, because the corporate oligarchy has reduced them to a subsistence wage and destroyed whatever freedom there ever was in the market.
Monopolies, in and of themselves, aren't anathema to customer satisfaction at all. The only real damage a monopoly can do is to create a climate (almost exclusively with government regulations and controls) that prevents competitors from its space.
About the only way that a monopoly can do harm without government is if they're sitting on such a pile of cash that they can undercut new competitors to drive them out of business...which, isn't a sustainable model for a monopoly - eventually they run out of money and competition makes it in. The undercutting the competitor model also ends up benefitting consumers, in a sick and twisted way.
That being said, Facebook isn't a monopoly unless you consider "Facebook" some single industry. It's certainly a shitty company, but that's another item entirely :)
I'm having a hard time seeing what in this article is unique to tech. The examples given are all places where the interests of the company providing the service and the interests of customers / users conflicted and the supplier decided to go with their own interests over those of their users / customers. Any business is based on having to make those choices and some of those choices need to be decided in the supplier's favor.
For example Twitter needs to boost advertising revenue per user, now that they probably have about the maximum number of users. If people want advertising supported services they are going to have to deal with advertising.
Parasitic scumbug businesses are nothing new. They number of them just happened to explode after after Reagan and "Greed is good".
The narrow mandate of increasing shareholder value is just too damn narrow and has been baked into the culture. Just change the rules and the culture will change.
whatever. keep in mind the reality of us law: federal courts found microsoft IS a monopoly but, since it wasn't "abusing it's market position" (a proposition worthy of Orwell on his best day), it did not need to be broken up.
so you CAN be a monopoly in the eyes of us law and be left alone to monopolize, thank you very much.
the judge (who himself was a fool who engaged in prohibited actions, media interviews during the trial, for which he was censured) also stated that "[Microsoft] proved, time and time again, to be inaccurate, misleading, evasive, and transparently false. ... Microsoft is a company with an institutional disdain for both the truth and for rules of law that lesser entities must respect. It is also a company whose senior management is not averse to offering specious testimony to support spurious defenses to claims of its wrongdoing."
Ask any farmer what the bull does when he's "servicing" the cows.