It was over beer and wings, so technically it wasn’t a business meeting. Unless of course your business IS beer and wings.
During this not-a-business-meeting, my friend confided that she had “The world’s worst customer.”
We stared at each other.
“The. Worst.” she repeated.
We’ve had this conversation before.
“They keep us from being a great company,” she lamented. “It’s demoralizing.”
She offered examples and metrics and evidence. It was all compelling.
Just as we’d had this conversation before, she’s had it with her boss.
Her boss, he’s the President & CEO of her company. He wants to know her plan to fill the multi-million dollar void after they part ways.
“For the record,” she says, “It wasn’t asked in a ‘Help me plan the strategy’ manner. It was more of a ‘What the hell do you know?’ question.”
Let me get this straight, your company trusts you enough to manage this customer’s multi-million dollar project, but not enough to believe you have business knowledge?
“Yes,” she said, sounding exasperated. “These are his control issues shining through.”
“No,” I said. “This is the kid showing the adult how open the childproof cap.”
The CEO’s question, “How do we fill the void afterward,” told the whole story.
You don’t fill the void after the fact; that’s not a strategy it’s a reaction.
It’s also counter-growth–no product development, no market development, no diversification, and no market penetration occurring.
This is the circle of Hell Dante created just for Ansoff.
I basically described the scenario as such:
“Is that about right?” I asked.
Yes.
What’s troubling is that I’ve seen this before.
No, not some dude whizzing on a kid – - you know what I meant, jackass.
Ask yourself, “Who is the enemy here?” Is it The customer who keeps your company down? Is it the company who values the customer over the employee?
I could say something like “This is how Fight Club begins,” but that would only weaken the seriousness of this issue-even though it’s true.
It sounds trite and sophomoric, but books that rail against the way we do business, the way we treat people, the culture we’ve created, the people we’ve become; books that tempt you to tear it all down and destroy everything mankind has ever touched. Books like these exist for a reason.
The undercurrent of discontent that tugs at and sweeps across generation after generation strengthens with time. Before long, it surfaces and becomes a tsunami of resentment and frustration.
What then? On the precipice of disaster, when everything becomes an either/or scenario, do you trust business to make the right decision? If 
the fate of all mankind rested in the hands of your company’s CEO or Board of Directors, how well would you sleep?
What does that say about your opinion of your company? Have you ever taken the leader-member exchange test?
Let me tell you how this ends; the employee --who has all of that invaluable corporate knowledge and customer experience– she will leave. This is a tremendous problem in American business. Junior- to middle-level managers are leaving companies at alarmingly high rates and significant costs –financial and otherwise– to businesses.
Imagine the impact on internal and external perception, company and departmental reputation, employee and customer stability, the impact upon work-in-progress, etc.
And why? Because the old guard has stopped listening to their own experts. They’ve stopped respecting the customer-facing employee. They’ve forgotten that what they perceive and what others do are decidedly different. It’s all a matter of perception. Both views have value, but it’s easier to teach the people on the ground to understand long-term strategic thinking than it is to get senior mgmt. to remember what it’s like to be a junior, customer-facing manager.
Scoff if you like, but it really is that simple. Consider the 100 Best Companies to Work For list. Now tell me why Amazon, Zappos, Google, Wegman’s, Whole Foods, and Starbucks are so popular that a single job gets a 1000 applications. This before the economic downturn. The answer, in part, is: A corporate culture that inspires unfettered openness, mgmt./staff collaboration, flattened hierarchies, and the valuation of employees as human beings.
We talk about Stakeholder Theory.
We talk about Transformational Leadership.
My friend, she’s wide-eyed now.
“I was just bitching,” she said. “This isn’t business, it’s wings and beer.”
- - -
Two months passed and nothing changed: The customer continued being terrible. The company continued to ignore her. The world continued to spin. And so she left.
Unable to get the level of support they required, the customer went shopping for someone a bit more reliable.
They called my company.
My boss asked what I thought about working with this customer. My boss asked what I knew from my friend.
I explained the problems and said it was a bad idea.
My boss said I’d be handling the customer. “You’ll fix it,” he said. [Broken and Stupid are NOT synonymous]
I asked if he’d ever said “No” to a customer.
“We don’t turn down business,” he said. “We never say no. Never. We say ‘Yes’ and figure out how to do it later.”
I never thought I’d loathe someone’s inability to say “No”. But there it is.
Here’s why that terrible customer is the worst:
First, they want mindless automatons to do their bidding not free-thinking, well-educated, professionally competent subject matter experts to provide them with industry best practice support, services, and advice.
Second, they drank their own kool-aid and now overestimate the value of their organization, their product, and their ability.
So what just happened? Let me sum up: The world’s worst customer became my customer. Why? Because the boss who wouldn’t listen to my friend became my boss when the world’s worst customer became my customer. It’s like musical chairs for idiots.
Let me tell you how this will end . . .
There is a fundamental difference between what Ms. White deems the Plaintiff’s “right to pursue gainful employment after retirement” and one’s right to be hired. AT&T’s refusal to rehire retirees does not preclude the Plaintiff’s right to pursue such employment; the two are mutually exclusive. As Ms. White stated, the members of American society have aged and the demographic has shifted. The reality is that this change does not favor the Plaintiff, as the change sees so-called 83 million baby boomers retiring at a hire rate than any other segment of American society (L’Allier and Kolosh, 2005).
ure the workforce of an organization. These retirement incentive programs are costly in the short term however, cost savings are realized over the long term in savings of salary and benefits. In addition, a restructure of the workforce may mean that the function requires a different skill than what the retired employee has” (Ryan).
