Diamond Author
Far too many businesses and corporations focus on efficiency to the point of increasing profit to the maximum and end up alienating the clientele or losing the customer altogether. Yes, it's easy to do. But let me tell you a quick story as a case study and let's discuss this.
You see, over the years, I started, built, and sold many going concerns. For a good portion of my life, I franchised my company across this great nation. One thing that always bothered me was when someone bought one of our franchises or one of my businesses and they immediately changed the business model in their infinite wisdom to streamline the business and squeeze out more profit from the revenue.
All good right - well, yes, and no - it all depends.
Once I sold a franchise to three Stanford MBA grads, and this was in the height of the Silicon Valley hay-days. They were great with customer service and their employees at first, they had the business generating all sorts of revenue, but then they decided to go and increase business efficiency in a Six Sigma like fashion. They started cutting out things that made their employees happy, and remember this was at the height of Silicon Valley's peak - there was a labor shortage.
Many employees quit.
Next, they started cutting out little perks we gave customers, things that differentiated us from the local car washes, and competition [the franchise was a mobile car washing service]. Oh they made a big profit for a while, but customer service declined and so too did their customer base. "What happened?" they thought. Simple, they were merely trading efficiency for customer service. In the end they nearly went bankrupt, imagine that?
The best market in the world, at the best time in history - please consider all this.
About this Author
Lance Winslow is a retired Founder of a Nationwide Franchise Chain, and now runs the Online Think Tank. Lance Winslow believes in customer service; http://www.aircraftwashguys.com
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Lance_Winslow
