Customer Service

The Right Hand Side of the Menu

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I’ve never understood people who don’t notice costs. Maybe it was because we didn’t have a lot of money when I was growing up, maybe it was bicycling around to deliver papers in the snow . . . but I don’t think so. My life wasn’t all that rough. I think it is good old Scottish common sense. It is sensible to assess price in terms of worth. Or as Franklin would see it – is the value of the time I spent earning that money a good exchange for the use or pleasure it provides. From different perspectives, this was what I thought when I set prices in my business and when I wander around a store, touching and thinking about that dress or dish.

I’ve long wondered about D.C.’s ability to spend money. As a Kelly girl, I found state and federal offices squandered time in ways private businesses never did. We know the stories of lottery winners whose money is gone in half a year. I suspect someone who considers the lottery a good investment probably isn’t all that good at assessing worth, though they may be misled by winning.

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Supermarket Parable

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At the store they offer plain, vanilla and chocolate soy milk. Chocolate is the only flavor that’s any good IMO. Other customers seem to agree as chocolate is always in short supply and sometimes sold out by the time I get to the store. It seems obvious they should stock more chocolate but they never do.

I complained a couple of times to guys in the dairy department and once to a manager. They didn’t understand what the problem was so I stopped complaining. When they have chocolate on the shelf I load up.

Today I took two cartons of chocolate and couldn’t reach a third. One of the stock guys climbed up on the shelf and got it for me. He good-naturedly said that it’s great stuff, it flies off the shelves. I thanked him and mildly suggested the store should stock more chocolate because it’s the most popular flavor. He said that, on the contrary, people who like chocolate should be more considerate and leave some for the other customers. He added that there is a God upstairs and He is watching. I believe this man missed his calling. He could have been a successful bioethicist.

Broken-Windows Software

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In broken-windows policing the cops go after guys who jump subway turnstiles and commit other minor crimes. This is because the policing of low-level crimes tends to lead to reductions in serious crimes. Not only are minor criminals disproportionately responsible for felonies as compared to the general population, the fact that the police are seen not to ignore the small stuff creates a virtuous cycle by deterring other crimes and increasing the public’s confidence in civic authority.

I thought of this issue when I noticed that a sophisticated Java program that I use on my PC has serious bugs that are never corrected. For example, opening an Excel tie-in in the Java program kills all of the open Excel processes on my PC. I’ve complained several times but nothing gets fixed. Meanwhile there are simple apps on my phone that get updated frequently so that annoying little problems disappear over time. The fancy Java software has many more features but which software would I rather use?

Another Chicagoboy adds: The problem is that many companies view software updates as a cost rather than a feature. Software upgrades in response to customer complaints should be a trumpeted feature, because they are a way of convincingly communicating that the company shares its customers’ values about what matters, and therefore that it’s safe for the customers to invest their time in the company’s products as opposed to competing products.

A Tale of H1B Workers in Dallas‏

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This H1B American worker replacement program for multi-national megacorporations is getting real. It isn’t limited to the IT industry workers and Disney actors training their own H1B visa replacements any more. It is now hitting the American health care industry in the skilled medical technician level, many of whom are college educated American citizen minorities, at least here in Dallas.

I just saw the local CVS pharmacy I use replace several college educated, Black Female, Hispanic female and Hispanic male Pharmacists, with Indian H1B workers last week.

The reason this sticks out in my wife went to pick up a changed 30-to-90 day prescription of mine for which the CVS Pharmacy has insufficient meds. A typical case of Indian “IT help desk hell” occurred with two people with incomplete knowledge of the issues of my meds, with the H1B worker trying to get 90 days of prescription price from my wife for 30 days of meds. No transaction happened.

I can only wonder what a seventy something retired senior trying to get his or her meds are dealing with this corporate H1B visa imposed communication problem?

And I also wonder about all those minority med-techs I see replaced here in Dallas are dealing with this?

The same way white male 40-to-50 something White male electrical engineers have in Silicon Valley for the last 15 years? The corporate versus middle class politics of this are poisonous in this Presidential season.

Consider the implications for the Black vote for Trump in Nov 2016. Trump’s Florida polls show him with _40_%_ of the below $25,000 a year black males over his plan to close the Mexican border with a wall. If Trump gets the same 1-in-5 vote that Richard Nixon got in 1972 with Obama’s 2008 and 2012 turn out percentages, he will take at least 45 states in the electoral college.

This is the electoral power of a real “closed borders” Presidential candidate.

And the corporate K-Street political contributor class behind both political parties still doesn’t see it coming.