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Making Money Off Complaints

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Submitted By Kchoksi
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Making money off complaints
One software company holds weekly staff meetings to build morale and allow for status reports from each department. One part of their meetings is the report on how many customer problems they rectified the past week. If the number increased, the group was given praise.
When asked why they praise increased problem calls, as opposed to working to fix those problems in the software or documentation, the owner said that they charge for each call, so it is a way to increase their income.
In other words, instead of making the customer completely satisfied with the product, they preferred some dissatisfaction, so they could fix the problem and make extra money from it.
This software package was a high-ticket, expensive application that was mainly sold to small companies. They also charged $50 for a user manual for the software.
Since the customers made a substantial investment in the software, they wanted to continue using it. But I wonder how much ill-will was created, even if the application usually performed well.
Complaints that fall on deaf ears
Have you ever experienced poor service or purchased a defective product and complained about it, only to have your complaints fall on deaf ears? Many companies that have plenty of business feel they don’t need to bother with complainers.
These businesses become very independent, especially if they have a product or service in demand. Some continue to succeed, even though they ignore customer complaints, but many will pay the price of lost business and degraded reputation in the long run.

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