Wednesday, March 10, 2010

Two kinds of companies.


When you reduce things to their absolute simplest, there are really only two kinds of companies in the world. Those that make things easy for its customers and those that make things hard. Or, put another way, companies look at things one of two ways. Some companies presume that whatever goes wrong is your fault. Others act as if whatever goes wrong is their fault.

Take Toyota for instance. For years, they took responsibility for their products and made things easy for their customers. Now it seems they are sailing a different tack. Unintended acceleration or faulty braking is somehow their customers' problem. Or obfuscated to the point where it's not clear what can be done to fix it and their customers' are shit out of luck.

Likewise the telcos. Just think of how easy they make it to read their bills. There, I've made my case.

Likewise the airlines. $50 just to re-book a flight?

Or any of the thousands of companies that charge a "re-stocking fee" if you wish to return something you don't want.

I'd like to be naive enough to think that good companies will prevail and bad companies will flounder. Unfortunately the low-bid economy we live in has driven most good companies out of business. And most companies (including ad agencies) act like little more than shysters. And not in a good way.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Keep posting stuff like this i really like it

Anonymous said...

Sorry, I would have commented sooner but I was reading my Telco bill. Yes, companies suck. They drain the life out of us and throw us away. Someone once told me I should stick to my principles and quit a really bad agency. Then I realized that losers have principles, winners have power. So I've abandoned my principles. The power should be here any minute.

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