Quote:
Originally Posted by
Corrigan
I wonder if Druff realizes that every company would be better off not having him as a customer and foregoing whatever $ he would give them.
What Patrick Mckenzie (who runs the kalzumeus blog) calls a pathological customer.
For those wondering, this is what Corrigan is talking about (though it's a different blog than the McKenzie one he's referring to, it's the same discussion):
http://summitevergreen.com/want-bett...charging-more/
Basically the Pathological Customer theory states that the neediest 20% of your customer base is wasting the majority of your company's time and always haggling for the best prices, so the overall value you're getting from them is negative.
The advice here is that you should just stop working with that "bottom 20%" and everything will run smoothly and your resources will be used more productively.
That's good advice for running a business where everyone is banging down your door to use your services.
It's bad advice when you're not always sold out, and where repeat business is important.
I will fully admit that customers like me end up costing a company a lot of time for minimal financial gain.
However, customers like me are also the ones who point out legitimate and real problems -- ones that will simply drive customers away who won't tell you why they're not returning.
So in this case, most people noticing their radio/nav system were tampered with would simply say, "Well that's disturbing. Fuck this place. I'm parking somewhere else in the future".
When I go to the GM, I make him aware of the problem, so he can either track down the guy doing this shit and fire him, or at the very least put the fear of God into the employees there that this won't be tolerated.
And that leads to their service improving, and more repeat customers.
If they are sold out every day no matter what, then they don't have to worry about shit like this, and the correct play is just to get rid of the high-maintenance customers.
Either way, I'm not going to apologize to anyone for speaking up when shit like this occurs and demanding some kind of refund. I didn't get the service I paid for. My car was supposed to be parked and not tampered with. That's what I paid for, and that's what I didn't get.