You Gotta Know When to Hold 'Em
So goes the "Gambler" song made popular by Kenny Rogers. The skills portrayed in the song seemed to be sorely lacking in some major companies this past year - the latest being phone giant Verizon, who just announced and then sheepishly retracted a two dollar "convenience fee" to be imposed on customers for paying their bills online.
This faux pas follows similar customer relations blunders from Bank of America and Netflix, to name but two others. Of course, in a capitalist system the theory is that a business can charge whatever they can get for their services, and similarly their customers are fully entitled to take their business elsewhere. From the consumer point of view, this has been at least partially successful, as the public outcry has led to reversals in most of these instances.
There are a few dynamics in play here, not least the general feeling of consumers in a tough economy: first, people simply hate being "nickle and dimed". Next, there is a feeling of discontent in the air fueled by the various public protests this year - we are simply "fed up". There is also the pervasive influence of social media, where stories like these rapidly reach a kind of critical mass in the public consciousness.
Those factors, coupled with the sometimes startlingly tone-deaf hubris of some of the corporate entities involved has led to some embarrassing situations. Of course, there are other ways to persuade your customers to do what you want, or to alter their behavior - use the carrot instead of the stick, or make the case for added value for a small added cost.
Or is that now a lost art...?
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