98-2

98-2

by Paul A. Herbig

The old joke is that there are two kinds of people; those who separate everything into two kinds and those that don’t. This time I am going to align myself with the former camp. You can put most businesses into one of two groups; those customer oriented (marketing-driven) and those who are driven by the bottom-line (financially oriented). Now, I am not suggesting customer oriented firms do not make money, research has borne out time and time again the most profitable firms are those who are the most customer driven firms. No, it is the predominant mode of behavior that determines which type of business you are in.

For example, in a customer-oriented firm, all employees, not just those on the front line dealing day to day with customers, have been trained to be pro-customer and taught to view the situation from the customer’s view and to do everything in his/her own power to help the customer and solve the particular problem that customer has. On the other hand, the financially driven firm is typically run by the numbers and the rules and woe be to the employee that attempts to help the customer and go against company policy. An analogy is the army tale about two types of quartermasters: one who will go through the book until he can find the rule allowing you to get the item you have requested and the second being the type that will search for any rule forbidding you to have the item. Customer-oriented marketing focused companies are the former while financially dedicated firms tend to align themselves with the second.

A big difference between the two types can be seen by how they view customers. Let us presume that 98% of the people are basically honest, law-abiding citizens who purchase goods, not take them, return them only when they do not work or do not need the item, or call upon service and support when they honestly have a problem and need help. In a customer-focused company, the business sees 98% of its clientele as good citizens while 2% may take advantage of them. But the marketers have decided they do not want to burden the 98% with unnecessary work to keep track of the 2%. On the other hand, the financial bottom-line dedicated firms only see the 2% as being troublesome and threatening to its entire existence. Their solution is to punish the other 98% percent to guard itself against the actions of those 2 %.

What brought this to mind was when I was recently reading reviews of new tax programs. TurboTax, a popular widely-used service, for their 03 edition makes people jump through hoops to use it. Users must contact Intuit to activate the software, a process that limits use of TurboTax to a single PC. The user must secure a 18 digit product key to activate the product over the internet Third party monitoring is also part of the deal. Safecast is secretly placed on users’ PCs upon installation (the program runs in the background all the time monitoring your PC for your use of Turbotax). When Turbotax is chosen to run, the Safecast product checks to see if the program you are using matches the activation code on the PC that you installed and to see that the code has not been tampered with. Turbotax and its mother firm, Intuit, appear to be part of the second group that see customers as the problem and to do everything they can to make certain those untrustworthy customers don’t rip us off. In the meantime, they are irritating their hard-core users who are put off by the arrogance and lack of trust by Intuit.

On the other hand, a perfect example of the first group is Nordstrom’s. Nordstrom’s takes back anything, anytime, for any reason or no reason. It is customer-focused. Legend has it has accepted returned car tires for credit. The only reason this is so peculiar is because Nordstrom’s doesn’t even sell tires. So somebody took advantage of them. This does not faze them. They treat their customer base with respect rather than suspicion. And as a result, their customer base is devoted to them. Which, if Intuit keeps up their Turbotax behavior, reating all consumers like criminals until otherwise proven, may wish they have done several years hence, if, indeed, they are still around.