Do you really value your customers or do you just want their money? | Hacker News Reader

Do you really value your customers or do you just want their money?

jslogan.com

8 pointsjslogan6 comments

If I had a business, of course I would only care about my customer's money. I freely admit I wouldn't care about my customers personally at all (as long my practices didn't oppose my morals, like mugging customers as they came in the door or something). I don't think there is anything wrong with that, because what makes money in the long-term is making my customers happy. I wouldn't care about my customers, but that doesn't matter because my customers would still be treated about the same as if I did (in an attempt to get them to buy more from me or tell their friends about me).

Of course, telling my customers this unpleasant truth might scare them away, so I would probably pretend to value my customers to their face.

But I'm not a businessperson. Maybe sincerely caring about your customers is the way to success. I wouldn't know.

I personally would find it hard to get motivated to build a product for money alone.

At the very least, I need to be passionate about the problem that my software is solving, and ideally I want to like, respect, and identify with my customers.

I'm as greedy as the next guy, but my desire to make a lot of money alone can't sustain the kind of effort needed to launch and nurture a startup.

The article seems to focus on the claim of caring, versus actually caring.

The success-implications of caring is a lot more complicated. Obviously something inconsiderate can be very financially successful, but then the customers invent the guillotine, cutting short a winning streak. The lassez faire capitalists like to say that's letting the market decide. But I like to think that it is the brilliant but illiterate & poverty stricken ethicists who do the deciding at that point, although with heavy potential for a reign of terror. And it can get pretty messy.

You mean the companies I do business with DON'T ACTUALLY LOVE ME??? I though it was REAL! ;)

Hmm, by our ex-phone company (Bell Canada) I think they went past 'love' and into 'stalkerism'. They've even stopped sending marked mail (with their name on the envelope) and have started sending blank envelopes full of their crap because we at least partially open it before it hits the trash can now.

It's literally one step away (legally speaking) from harassment, they send like 2 unsolicited letters less per month than the police need to lay charges. It's that creepy.

It's still a social relationship. Money is a means of measuring and exchanging obligations. But when it wholly supplants the social relationship, you're in trouble. Money is merely a tool that facilitates a business relationship; it does not wholly define it.

I realize this sounds vague. But think about every time someone on the other side of a transaction went "above and beyond the call of duty". It may be in a big way, or it may be in a small way. But for us humans, as social creatures, it makes the difference.

This is not a call to let yourself be taken advantage of. But it is a call to view your customer or client as more than a walking billfold.

I have some long term business connections that maintain themselves in good part because there is also a personal connection. We're not social friends, but we respect and look out for each other, to our mutual benefit.

Maybe my viewpoint is antiquated. On the other hand, maybe some of the recent, "anonymous excesses" in various marketplaces is an indication that it isn't.

Not that I'm defending the crony criminalism that's also been a part of those excesses. But I'm uncertain as to whether those people really cared about each other, or whether they simply found each other willing and useful tools.

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