On Trust and Betrayal, Indicators of a Competitive Market

The money line on the comment card I filled out was that when a business reneges on an oral contract, no matter how small, they're betraying a trust and in effect telling me, "We don't value or even need your business." My only response can be that I no longer value them as a supplier and that I'll take my business elsewhere. Or else I guess I could just shrug my shoulders, pile that one more indignity along with all the others in the back seat, and soldier on. Well, I'm tired of taking it on the chin and smiling. So, I'll take this little opportunity to bitch in public, to take as much business away from them as I can along the way, just to make my point. Maybe this will have little or no effect, but I don't care, it's cathartic just to write this post.

They say a positive experience generates far fewer positive referrals than a negative experience generates negative referrals. I'm living proof, I guess. It's been six hours since this negative event, and I'm still pissed. They deserve whatever bad karma can come their way after such a bone-headed customer service move. I don't do this often, by the way.

I left Seattle's Best and went happily on to Austin Java, a local shop. I'll continue to explore new haunts and avoid not just that one, but all of their brethren. Seattle's Best has just been moved to the bottom of my list - indeed, this sours me on all chains, at least for the time being. I'm shopping local from now on, at least when it comes to coffee and wi fi - we have many options in this field in Austin.

I believe it's a business maxim that Trust is hard to win, but easy to lose. All businesses should treat their regular customers with extra care, because they give them more revenue for less cost than any other. They're the most valuable, if they stop to think about it. Where businesses have to go out of their way and spend to market and sell to bring in new customers, the regulars come without any marketing, and bring in others with their recommendations and as company. All they have to do is respect them and treat them well and they keep on coming in.

For that reason, competitive businesses should respect all their customers and treat them as if they really value their business, in hopes that they become regulars. At least, that's how I understand service businesses in particular to work. In retail business, shouldn't repeat business and referrals be a goal to strive for?

So it's an indicator of a competitive market when a customer that is treated poorly as I was has an option to react the way I did. In a duopoly market, I'd have far fewer options - I'd be as likely to suck it up, take it, etc...what would I have done were I six months into a 24-month contract with this cafe owner? What would have been my options if this were one of the two franchised coffee shop chains in town? You get the picture...

One risk of large chains is just this sort of impersonality. The risk is that individual links in the chain begin to act as if the corporate head were the customer, rather than the person across the counter. They act as if every penny were a line item in a business process flow chart, to be trimmed, so that the next quarter is better than the last. They act as if a market is a big homogeneous blob, instead of a series of individual win or lose business transactions - those Moments of Truth - with real-live flesh-and-blood customers and clients. In short, they forget the "service" in the words "customer service" and act as if they are not in the business of providing a service, but of cutting costs and counting their revenues.

When they lose sight as these folks did today, we count on the market to provide a correction, but sometimes it takes a while for such offenders to feel the heat. The good ones react and correct, we'll see what Seattle's Best does...I'm not holding my breath, but I did give them an option to react by filling out the card. In most of the domestic broadband markets today, there's far less competition than there is in coffee shops. Consequently, there's far less potential for the market to exert a correcting force in those markets. In most cases, there's little chance for the market to work as it should, or could, so I'd wonder by what definition do they describe these markets as "competitive."

Sighhh. This is disappointing. I'll miss my easy chair, Wi Fi, and coffee. But I have new horizons ahead of me... and I'll focus on that. It's sad, a little like losing a friend. This is Tough Love, I guess.