The New Paradigm

A couple of posts at The Baseline Scenario point to some real-world examples of a creepy feeling I've had for several years - that the point of the exercise is no longer to honor your word and to deliver at least what you promised, but to make the customer force you to hold up your end of the bargain.  It's like every business is adopting the Used Car Lot model.

James Kwak tags it as "Design or Incompetence", and has begun to lean toward Design.  ie: they do it on purpose.  The banks or the mortgage companies or whoever make the contract or the offer of service as complicated and opaque as possible in order to suck us in and then fuck us over. (first post - second post)

Most of us being 'hassle-averse', we're not inclined to press a point even when we think we're not being treated quite right.  Applying this assumption to a business rolling out a new offer (using rough round numbers here):  I'm trying to pull in $1M in new revenue, with a Net Target of $300K.  I'm spending $500K getting it out to the public, and I'm offering discounts/rebates totaling another $200K.  Then I sit back and watch the numbers as the calls come into Customer Service.  But what if I make a coupla relatively simple adjustments?  First, the offer of discounts is big and splashy, but I add several lines of disclaimers and eligibility requirements in very complex and jargony language.  Then I take some steps to ensure that I'm weeding out the new prospects who are likely to insist on getting the good deal they think I'm offering (putting them on hold when they call in works wonders - but any hurdle will do); plus, I build in a way for the Cust Svc reps to get a little bonus by cutting into the discounts, or upselling, or counterselling, or whatever.  It could also be as simple as not telling the reps what the offer actually requires the customer to do to be eligible for the deal.  It's not quite Bait-n-Switch, but it's really close.

The point is that we're going way off into the weeds of Caveat Emptor.  Companies that can make it obvious that they're working hard to earn back the trust of their customers will lead the economy back to solid footing.  Without that trust and confidence, we don't have an economy.