Caring for customers

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According to this article at CNN, an airline is to give tickets away for free "for being nice". From what I understand, it's going to be a surprise reward to people who help other people or the flight staff or keep civil in difficult situations.

Not only this, they've also chosen expanding legroom over adding more seats onto their planes. They also intend to employ further facilitations, such as more plugs for your entertainment devices.

Well, I'm the last person to jump on enthusiasm over a piece of news, but it's surely a nice thing to read.

Aside from all semi-moral concerns, it's good to see that someone wants to make business by playing nice rather than doing his best to force people to use his product and raising the prices to the max he can get away with.

It would be good if the whole of capitalism worked this way instead of hiring legions of lawyers to sue the competition out of business and lifting the prices once you're the one. Or creating a need for your product and then lobbing for laws that make sure no one else can make a similar product and... yeah, raising the prices to the max, which is the common ground.

Bad news travels fast. But good news can too. If you're nice and your customers are satisfied, they will tell their friends. Your sales figures will increase, make this part of production costs that doesn't depend on the number of issues of product sold (ie the design, office rental fee, some salaries) pay off better. Also, good reputation is the best advertisement you can get. Earning it is actually cheaper than paying agencies to inflate it for you. And more secure in the long run. Also, moral concerns put aside, being nice and asking nicely when you want something is a better idea than simply saying you want it. Giving or doing favour without immediate reward is actually not a loss. You never know when that someone will repay the favour. With a special bonus. Building good relations and basing on them rather than the power of your money and laws that protect you, is ultimately more beneficial, in the long run. On a cynical note, no one tells you to do this out of the goodness of your heart if you can't make yourself genuinely care - it's just a good thing to do - good for you as well. Some companies fail to catch on this one.

If you drop your margin of profit a little bit (making, like, 200% instead of 250%), you will sell even more. The number of additional issues of product you sell will compensate for decrease in profit from each single issue. Furthermore, your customers will be more pleased than before and that can only help you. Benefits of good reputation and customer satisfaction are quite tangible which some companies fail to learn. Unfortunately, not all of them are driven out of business.

 

I agree with you Chevy in this thoughts but unfortunatelly the policies this airline is adopting is the exception of the rule. As you may well know greed is part of the system (and is now becoming part of humans too unfortunatelly). I believe that these actions would die (only evil seems to live forever) if us, the customers do not support them by actually buying that product or activelly choosing over anything else similar. After all it is our benefit to us all.

Of course they did not do that entirely out of their good hearts. So i hope that if they see a raise in their passengers (see profits) they won't go back to their old tactics.

 

Yeah, it's obvious they didn't do it *just* because they care so much. But they at least know how it works.

If a company don't care at all, they won't even realise that being nice might actually help (and we all know companies like that). It takes at least a little bit of sensitivity to notice.

Wonder if those guys won't try to cut it short and raise the prices some time soon. The ability to destroy a planet is insignificant next to the power of the Greed

 

There are a lot of industries that have small niche players that "do it right". Part of the problem is the cost of "doing it right". The majority of people don't care about service or quality. They care about price first, quality second, and service last.

With my familiarity with the banking industry, I can tell you that there are some small banks with an average customer balance measured in the millions. They are not cheap to bank with (even for the rich people who bank there). The primary example I am thinking of assigns 10 to 100 customers to a representative, depending on the activity level of the accounts, and that one rep services 90% of the customers banking needs. That person does everything from teller work up to loan officer (and they are very well paid, I almost broke into it ).

Another good example was the iPod, and really Apple itself. Apple has had to be content with a very small market share, but those who fit the niche would never be satisfied with an x86 machine. Apple is trying to break out of that, and if they do, look for them to alienate those who have kept them alive for so long.

Looking at other industries, there are airlines, grocery stores, clothing boutiques, hardware stores, and even toy stores that are very successful in their niche, and they "do it the right way".

So to wrap up this overly long post, doing it right isn't what society wants: we much prefer to have it cheap.

 

Yes, it's a good point about cheaper prices. I said something about it already in the first post, so I won't repeat myself. Suffice to say, the most common strategy is to do whatever you can to force customers to buy your product and then raise the prices to the max.

Caring for customers would have to involve making the prices reasonable instead of doing it "the evil way"... In case of some products, service & quality don't matter much, so only the price counts. In other cases, some standards of quality and service just have to be met and, well, they play an important role - especially in the service sector (so it's not product per se).

When it comes to software, things become majorly different for me. Give the damned CDs, or better let me download it and I'll be fine. I don't need manuals, technical support, newsletters, promos, whatever. A good idea would be to charge a price remotely connected to the real value

 

Of course customer satisfaction plays its role in companies, but that (good service) is forgotten far more easily than negative things. For example: once you have more leg-room you will be expecting to have the same at the next journey. For a while it's a benefit, but then it's forgotten as competitors catch up. In a way, every company loses, so why not just let them suffer and earn more?

Also, price is a balance between demand and supply. Going to the "other way" would be just plain stupid, when right next month it can be the other way around. Would customers care of it? Not a damn, so in this sense it is pretty sensible to rip off every penny you can -while you can.