[Re: “Loose Cannon: They Love To Spy. And It Showed,” DIRECT Newsline, Monday, March 17]:
Your sample letter suggests what a smart company might do, but hasn’t really addressed a bigger issue. America’s largest airlines in particular, but any large business in general, have gotten so big, and so unmanageable that the executives at the top level are further out of touch with the people they are supposedly serving. Service is no longer the issue. It’s revenue. They have lost the core reason for their business. They are so out of touch, they don’t see that returning to their roots would actually increase the bottom line.
Stock holders or potential investors dictate policy, as they are looking for more return on their investment, but CEO’s, CFO’s and COO’s are not responding in the way that is best for their respective industries, they are responding to pressure and altering the wrong areas of their businesses.
Southwest Airlines is a good model. They are low cost, earn a profit and provide a level of service that is acceptable to the general traveling public. There is no first class, yet their planes are always full. The market is changing. Fewer people require comforts when traveling, especially given the costs associated with them, and the big airlines are too slow to follow. Even in good times, those patrons are not likely to return.
Teleconferencing and the Internet have made a lot of business travel unnecessary.
This is indeed a free enterprise system, and with progress and change, some businesses fall by the wayside. Just ask anyone who manufactured stagecoaches.
Tony Kudalis
Account Executive
The Wellness Institute / Best Lead Lists
Nashua, NH
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Richard, Richard, Richard:
You keep looking for logical behavior from people who lack even common sense.
You anticipate empathy from people who prefer to spend their time contemplating their own navels (and admiring the lint they find there).
After nearly 53 years in business, I have learned that the vast majority of business owners and managers do not want to think about customers. It would require them to sublimate their own preferences and opinions.
This, of course, makes them vulnerable. So, the mighty will fall–as they deserve to do –and their market shares will be eaten away, bite by bite, by competitors who may have less money and less equipment and fewer resources , but who are willing to listen to customers and who understand that their role is to not to be served but, rather, to be of service.
Paul Haker
the ph factor
Roseville, MN
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Excellent piece today.
In response to your rhetorical query ,”How loudly does the customer relations industry have to yell “customer-centric” before every aspect of an enterprise hears it?”
Loud enough for the boards of directors and CEOs of the enterprisesin question to dissect the meaning behind buzzwords like ‘customer-centric.
Network
