Feature Do customers crave respect?

Mega-vendors treat you — and your customers — as expendable commodities Do customers crave respect?

Many years ago, I worked with a publisher that always confused anecdote with antidote. “Let me give you an amusing antidote,” he would say. I never said it out loud, but I always agreed. Any anecdote that ends up being an antidote is amusing in its bones. If you are interested, the rule in publishing these days is that publishers are from the sales side and may have very little formal education, while editors tend to be fairly well educated but lack judgement. It’s a marriage made in hell, and is largely responsible for the current condition of media. That said, if you view every anecdote as a potential antidote, you will find your life enriched. By way of anecdote, my wife this month threw away a nearly new Cuisinart food processor. Last February, well in advance of the pandemic, we were sitting in the living room, talking one night, and a groaning, chewing, mechanical noise came from the kitchen, followed by the stench of burning electrical contacts and rubber. We went into the kitchen, and the food processor had turned itself on and lit on fire. Smoke, anyway. No visible flames, but smoke and stink. Nobody had been near it, and we had not used it for at least a day or two. It was just sitting there, alone. Naturally, we pulled the plug. This was clearly not a “normal” case of appliance failure. It was nearly bedtime, we could easily have been upstairs and there was no apparent trigger or

reason the failure decided to happen as it did, unsupervised, alone and off. It seemed to be an imminent safety threat we had dodged, but somebody else may not, so we tried to contact Cuisinart right away. Predictably, Customer Service was not available at that time, so we left a detailed, written description. It was ignored, as were subsequent attempts. I am not an “enforcer.” On the other hand, I get irked when I am ignored — particularly on safety issues — so after a month or so I contacted Ontario’s consumer safety division and left a report. Crickets. More contact attempts with Cuisinart failed, so, more irked, I left a review on Amazon, where we had purchased the unit. More crickets. Finally, after more calls to Cuisinart, we got instructions to call them on FaceTime so they could watch us cut the power cord off at the base before they would send a new one. Then a new machine showed up on our doorstep and that was that.

Customers increasingly ignored

The point of this long story is because it is indicative of a general level of customer service that has gone from a long history of diminishing service to an uptick once Amazon started offering no-questions-asked refunds to a sudden drop to neglect. Each one of us has become too insignificant to warrant a reply in the ever-so-important, yet virtual, digital world. We have yet to hear back from Consumer Safety or Amazon. Another antidote (sic). I subscribe to the digital blasts of another publication in our sector. I have to; you don’t. We competitors like to keep an eye on each other. In case you have unsubscribed, which many have, I get up to four emails a day, and most have zero original, editorial content. They are just repurposed product releases from preferred advertisers. Legally, that makes them an ad, not editorial. The easiest way to see this is in Canada Post’s regulations for Publication Mail. I get it; digital is not postal. On the other hand, regulations are regulations, and a publication that contains more than 70 percent ads is a catalog. We polled you about sending emails every day, and you said don’t do it. If you like definitions, that would be a definition of abuse. You say don’t do it; they do it, anyway. So we move from customer neglect to customer abuse. This deal with magazines did not used to be this way. Wonder why? There are two reasons. First, to include the postal regulations, a publisher would not pester you with direct mail on a daily basis because it would cost too much. Digital is not “free,” as many believe. However, once he has invested in the infrastructure, got hooked into the software “subscriptions” and hired a stable of kids that can talk slang, a publisher can diminish the cost-per-impression by beating his lists to death. Second, very few publishers own anything. They are employees of megacorp communications companies and they run by committee. Once a list stops providing ROI, it’s killed, the publication is dead, the Gucci-shoes publishers explain to the shareholders that it’s the internet’s fault and they move on to video. Or Instagram. Or Snapchat. Or Twitter. Or whatever is not yet on life support. This applies equally to adverting, editorial and every bastard, inbred iteration of the two. Continued on next page

Clearly, there is a disconnect between Big Advertising line with their hands out, begging through some starving-artists and the consumer. We are forced to “accept” terms that allow for guild or pandering to YouTube for a chance to be heard through cautiously worded, yet malignant, privacy invasion, so-called TV speakers or $100 ear buds. searches that both reveal only sponsored content and ignore You have heard it all. The travel industry is hurt, as are airmost of which happened before 1980 and, recently, identify, lines, auto parts, gaming and the Olympics. label and suppress ideas and arguments that are deemed not The oil and gas industry was hit, but here’s an interesting to meet some undefined level of propriety. We assume it is not bit. Even in advance of Covid, the price war between Russia and long before any merchant that is not Amazon, Walmart or Nike Saudi Arabia had driven oil prices down, yielding a probability of will be canceled. default in that industry moving from 9.1 percent on March 1, to The Supreme Courts of both Canada and the U.S. in the 22.5 percent on March 31. Housing starts and building permits, 1980s decided to “find” a “limited right to commercial speech.” At however, are on an opposite trend. the moment, we seem to know that “commercial speech” applies International trade also was affected heavily before Covid not only to merchandise and services, but also to special inter— particularly in the areas surrounding our industry. Imports ests and social movements. What is not so clear is what “limited” from China were heavily influenced by negotiations and tariffs in means. At the moment, it appears the limits are well out there China’s dealings with the U.S., and those had either reciprocal or beyond Uranus. opposing effects in Canada, depending on where you’re looking, Family businesses become prey this issue on page 20 that Lee Senter reports Home Depot being This change in relationship between the governors and the out of carpet, adhesive, underlayment and other flooring supgoverned, between the consumer and the provider, cannot be plies. Not expected. overestimated. It has affected the way we sell, the way we Canada is investigating Amazon Canada for its pricing prepare the market for sales and the practices. Google is being investigated way we serve the customer after in the U.S. and sanctioned in Europe. Et the sale. And the relationship has Expedience is king. cetera. The fact is, the consumer is fed become predator/prey, with the Googles and Twitters of the world as predators, and family owned busi “We need to move on,” up with being pushed around. The dollar is still king, and until the consumer swaps that dollar for a good or service, nesses as the prey. is the new mantra. he or she has the cards. How do we respond? There, What can we conclude from as Shakespeare famously penned, these facts? It appears that maybe best is the rub. To be honest, the triedpractices set in place a dozen-or-so and-true policy of putting the cusmillennia ago may have been there for tomer first has not worked. Not in a reason, after all. In our Readers’ Sura competitive sense. Nor has safety veys over the years, our own customor quality. Not when you cannot get ers (you) have told us repeatedly you a reply in two months for a kitchen do not want people spamming your appliance that lights itself on fire, alone at night in the kitchen. InBoxes, just because they harvested your addresses. You do not Expedience is king. “We need to move on,” is the new mantra. want outside special interests messing around with the content But is it? The Covid-19 pandemic has ground society nearof your information. You do not want big corporations thumbly to a standstill. This has had interesting, sometimes amusing, ing their noses at rules and regulations designed to protect your results, such as back-ordering toilet paper and selling out of personal and financial information. flour. If only we had bought shares in Plexiglas last January. One of the older Best Practices is a thing called the Golden However, a sinister underbelly is being revealed. It is esRule. It says, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto timated that 14 percent of restaurants closed during the past you.” You can’t argue that Zuckerberg, Apple, Zucker or Alphabet five months will not reopen. As family businesses, these are not are doing unto you what they want you to do to them. Not unjust numbers for StatCan. They are careers and fortunes. Family less they are all closet porn stars. owned businesses rarely start up with excess cash or overflow From the perspective of today, maybe old is the new new. from maxed-out RRSPs. As we peek out from under the shroud of Covid, your new cusEntertainers are foundering. It was already tough when tomers may just want to do business with somebody they can the digital world started stealing all the means of distribution trust. If you try it, it might make an interesting antidote. and left the artists with a guitar and their shoes. Before the panbut there was an effect. You will note in the CFCRA’s column in demic, there was still money in events. Now, many are sitting onComment at www.coveringscanada.ca