I would like to point back to Kurt's original statement if I may and point out that at least one major company not only lost a lot of good will but a lot of sales and now faces a lot of very bad will in the form of lawsuits for their indirect loss of good will. Target had a lot of good will going into the Christmas season but lost a lot of it due to their lack of responsiveness to their companies IT group not following up on alerts that they had bugs in the system. They lost further good will, and sales, by not being forth coming in dealing with the issue and allowed it to stretch out over multiple weeks where others leaked the information faster than they, Target, wanted it to go public. What is the out come of all of this loss of good will? A number of their competitors have made hay and picked up their lost sales, and I suspect they have picked up customers they may not have had if Target had worked faster and taken more responsibility for their actions. They are also still facing a number of class action lawsuits that will further cost them sales and money as they drag through the courts. I would not bet against some of their competitors helping push the issue that most of the IT management that did not respond to the alerts were are still employed and in the same management positions they occupied when this all happened this next Holiday season. Is this a loss of good will or is this not. Companies that seem to place value on the good will of their customers "seem" to want to make sure they keep their customer if not happy, at least not mad at them. Smaller places of business, think mom and pop stores, know that a happy customer will be one that comes back and tells friends. Larger companies like WalMart, Target, KMart/Sears seem to have forgotten that and think that only prices matter. Jon From: [email protected] To: [email protected] Subject: RE: [NTSysADM] OT: Corporate Support of Open-Source projects Date: Mon, 21 Apr 2014 22:24:58 +0000
Can you say “Comcast” ?? I knew you could… From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Andrew S. Baker Sent: Monday, April 21, 2014 6:20 PM To: ntsysadm Subject: Re: [NTSysADM] OT: Corporate Support of Open-Source projects So, only the category leaders (and those vying to be category leaders) offer customer service? Are there any category leaders that *don't* offer customer service (or anything approaching real customer service), while others in their category do? ASB http://XeeMe.com/AndrewBaker Providing Virtual CIO Services (IT Operations & Information Security) for the SMB market… On Mon, Apr 21, 2014 at 10:07 AM, Kurt Buff <[email protected]> wrote: On Mon, Apr 21, 2014 at 5:56 AM, Steven M. Caesare <[email protected]> wrote: >> Re: Companies' incentives: That's not universally true. I refer you to >> companies that have as at least some of their core operating principles the >> ideas of customer service - > > That's an ends to a means. That customer service exists to promote goodwill > with regard to the customer buying products the sell, > > The litmus test for these: > > Cold the company conceivably exist by eliminating the "extra mile" customer > service? Yes. Could they existin by eliminating product sales? No. Hrm. I don't think that's the right yardstick. I believe the question should be: Would these companies be category leaders if they didn't have such good customer service? And I believe the answer is no. Kurt
