Lots of comments seem to miss the point of this article. The point being made is to put the concerns of the customer first before yours. I see the opposite happen all the time in software development. You have two systems that somehow don't talk to each other. Instead of implementing some kind of connector between them, you make the customer log in twice and transfer information between the two systems. In this case, the maker has prioritized their convenience over that of the user. This is the wrong approach. Before someone gets pedantic, obviously, if you have analyzed the costs and decided it makes sense, then go ahead and do you but don't just make default decisions to benefit yourself at the cost to your customer
Exactly this. Further, I'd expand on what they are saying to say that the difference between a bad customer experience, good customer experience, and great customer experience typically lies in the little details and goes beyond the core offering. Great customer service orgs take the time to check up on you and make sure you are happy (and have it not be an automated effort), they bend the rules to fit an edge case, they always own mistakes and try to make it right, and they are fundamentally customer focused. Bad orgs treat customers like numbers and hide behind policy and contracts at every opportunity so that they don't actually have to deal with people.
For example, I took my girlfriend to a nice hotel for our anniversary last year. When the hotel heard I was having an anniversary, they sent up a very nice hand written congratulatory card, a bottle of prosecco, and a selection of deserts on the house. That couldn't have taken them more than 15 minutes and cost them like 20 dollars, but it is something I will always remember; I will definitely return there in the future; and I recommend that hotel to any friends seeking a nice place to stay. That is great customer service.
At a more basic level, I was at a mid tier hotel a few weeks ago and somehow I didn't get the room upgrade I paid for. The management immediately refunded me the difference without complaint and gave me a few drink tickets to use at their bar as an apology. That is good customer service.
Contrast those to my experience at my former favorite steak house this year where for the last ten years I had been telling everyone to go. I went there for Valentine's day (had a reservation) and was told I had to wait 30 minutes for a table to open. While I was waiting, I saw multiple couples of the same size come in behind me and get seated. After the 30 minute wait, they tried to seat us at the loud and noisy bar. When I complained, they basically told me tough shit you get what you get. A reservation just guarantees you a table not a good one. I concluded that they were discriminating against us because we are younger than the average clientele there. Not only did I walk out and cost them my business, but I gave them a scathing Yelp review, and now shit talk them at every opportunity. I will never go back even though they were great every other time I was there, and instead always point friends to one of their main competitors when asked my opinion about local steak houses. I do this even though I know the competitor's food isn't as good. They could have given me the table I deserved; they could have comped some drinks or something; but no, they were right and I was wrong and so they lost a loyal customer instead.
Your story highlights why customer service is not as easy as we think because of the requirement for sustained performance being quite high.
By your own admission, you went to this steak house for 10 years and had liked it so much you encouraged others. I'd imagine you would've visited multiple times per year? So, let's say 20~30 visits total? All that time you were happy and raved about it, but one bad visit and not only did it sour your opinion to the point you won't return, but you also mentioned that you will disparage them whenever you can. At around 30 visits, 97% of your experience there was positive to the point of rave reviews.
I'm not having a go at you, I'm just using your story to highlight the difficulty in customer service and how fickle we all are as customers (myself included). I suppose that really just speaks more to our recency bias as humans as well.
Losing 30 minutes, eating in a noisy environment, and not being able to control how the restaurant manages a schedule the GP doesn't have insight into is awful?
Getting pissed off over an experience like that is probably an appropriate response. Or bringing the 10 year history of being a loyal client to the management's attention. But going to war against them for a once in 10 years event sounds like first world entitlement.
The overall point about the lengths needed to maintain an experience that keeps customers happy is real, though. You don't make money by trying to profit on every transaction or treating entitled people like you know they're acting like an ass.
Getting pissed off over an experience like that is probably an appropriate response. Or bringing the 10 year history of being a loyal client to the management's attention. But going to war against them for a once in 10 years event sounds like first world entitlement.
In general I'd be inclined to agree, but two things come to mind. One: if I had a reservation I'd expect it's for a table not a seat at the bar. Two: being deliberately singled out versus being an accident. If the staff had been more obvious (e.g. tables are for whites only), would you suggest giving them another chance?
DOSA in SF (the one on Fillmore) deserves an honorable mention for not honoring reservations. We showed up early with a reservation and they continued to seat people before us, after like half an hour we all left because we were going to a show. I talked to the manager who claimed we arrived late, etc., etc. I wasn't a regular customer, I didn't make a scene, but you can bet your ass I'll badmouth DOSA every chance I get. If you're not going to honor reservations, why take them?
You don't make money by trying to profit on every transaction or treating entitled people like you know they're acting like an ass.
And what makes someone entitled? Wanting a table to go with the reservation? Or looking different than the typical customers?
People's reactions to how they are treated is emotional.
The guy apparently received appalling service and was humiliated in front of his girlfriend on Valentine's day by a restaurant he trusted and was attached to.
This was personal betrayal.
This is why cause people to react so strongly. We don't see this as a simple business transaction, this is personal and emotional.
Yes you can see that reaction and even description after some time passes is purely emotional. Nothing logical can pierce that. It doesn't matter that he gives his friends bad recommendation, as long as the restaurant which betrayed him is punished by lost customers. That's outsider's perspective, I can bet for him he feels this perfectly fine and good behavior and maybe even doing a service to his friends.
The reality is, if 97% was a great experience and 3% awful, its still a great place when averaged. I for example would gladly try out such a place if it would be described objectively, without some stupid emotions overshadowing every single fact.
Some would call the reaction appropriate, some overblown. Not judging, haven't been treated like that. But generally emotions are bad long-term advisor, unless decision also passes some basic logic check (which usually they don't).
A Spock-like character always shows up in HN threads like these to claim perfect rationality, cite some figures, etc. You know what? People are emotional creatures. and sometimes, yes, a humiliating and excessive failure on the part of a restaurant is enough to warrant a strong and permanent reaction. This is a restaurant, after all. In the end, who gives a shit? You’re going there to have a good time. If you don’t have a good time, it’s perfectly valid to not go back.
We need to listen to our emotions more, not less in some circumstances. I don’t mean to make a scene, but to take it as a sign that we shouldn’t eat at that restaurant, take that job, date that person, patronize that airline, etc.
In general this sounds reasonable. But another perspective has to do with binary reasoning. Are you trustworthy? IMHO its a yes/no answer. Are you dependable? Again yes/no. If you are "mostly honest or dependable", do I count on you 70% or 90% of the time? IMHO the restaurant dropped the ball on customer service. I would have taken that personally as well. Suppose it were a customer meeting instead. You've arranged it all, refreshments, talk some business, eat and talk more, relax and enjoy your new customer/client/partner relationship. Oops... they want to put you at the bar?
It doesn't really matter if his reaction was justified or not, that's how people act. And it highlights why customer service is so important: because sometimes it really does just take one slip up to lose a loyal customer and to turn a promoter into a detractor.
It makes no difference if it's rational or not if it's reality because if you're an expensive steak house, you have first world customers so their first world problems are your problems.
Right, it sounds like Thriptic blew up the problem and he had to make a scene to be heard. It's now pride that prevents him from going back even though he would lose his favorite dinner spot.
In his defense, if a customer is paying and not asking for out of the ordinary, it's really bad business to not at least acknowledge the customer when they are generous enough to complain.
One expects flawless experience every time, not 97% of the time. A steak house is not that critical, but would you fly if the success rate of an airliner is 97%? Would you go to a steak house where you get a food poisoning every 3% of the time? Where do you draw the line?
Waiting in the line for 30 minutes can't be compared to dying, that's nonsense and I'm sure you realize that.
Yes I would go to steakhouse which has 97% chance of being awesome, with 3% chance of waiting in the line 30+ minutes, even on valentine. But that's me (and my wife)
It also speaks to the need to know your customer. The restaurant should have had discreet cameras with facial recognition software to alert management immediately that a high value customer was walking in the door, and to make sure he got treated right.
Not really. Surveillance capitalism is pretty-much always ugly and awful. What surprises me is that the restaurant didn't have a loyalty scheme, or a front-of-house incentivised to recognise repeat customers. These systems are cheaper, more flexible, have fewer gross externalities than facial recognition and inherently promote human interaction.
As bizarre as your suggestion is, what makes you so sure Thriptic is "high-value"? A guy this volatile and so easy to annoy probably found reasons in the past to justify (in his own mind) 10% tips or lower. Perhaps the cameras (or just a wise restaurant manager) knew Thriptic was in fact a cheapskate that they had little interest in serving.
I feel bad for your friends. They come to you often for good steakhouse recommendations and instead of pointing them to the restaurant with the best food and great service except on Valentine's Day, you send them down the block to the mediocre place in an effort to pay this place back. One of your friends might catch on and stop asking for recommendations, or worse, start giving you bad ones as well.
As for your second example, I don't find this to be good customer service. You paid for an upgrade and didn't get it. It's not just about the incremental upgrade. You could have booked elsewhere and the upgrade was part of that decision. The sum of the parts is greater than the whole sometimes. They could have done better than a refund on the delta and some booze.
> For example, I took my girlfriend to a nice hotel for our anniversary last year. When the hotel heard I was having an anniversary, they sent up a very nice hand written congratulatory card, a bottle of prosecco, and a selection of deserts on the house. That couldn't have taken them more than 15 minutes and cost them like 20 dollars, but it is something I will always remember; I will definitely return there in the future; and I recommend that hotel to any friends seeking a nice place to stay. That is great customer service.
I'm not doubting that this is nice, but in a lot of businesses this could be all or most of their margin. You can be nice all day long but at the end of the day there has to be something left to run the business. There are plenty of ways to exceed customer expectations without running your business into the ground.
Whilst checking into Hotel Sir Albert in Amsterdam we mentioned it was the fourth time we'd stayed there. When we returned to the room later in the day there was a charming card featuring a hand drawn Kiwi and a note, something like "Welcome home Mr and Mrs Forster". My wife has kept that card, even though she hates being called Mrs Forster (that's not her name). Total cost, maybe $0.5. Customer loyalty delta, very positive.
For that particular stay, yes. But it increases the likelihood that the customer will come back and, perhaps more importantly, tell everyone they know about how awesome the place is. It's hard to see how this wouldn't work out to a net positive in the longer run.
Depend show much utility you offer and how much money your clientele have. For some businesses, the customer doesn’t value anything other than the price.
I somehow doubt this is the case. When a business is described as low-margin, it’s on a per-sale basis; they make $.02 on every bolt sold kind of thing. If its a functioning business, then they still make reasonable total profit due to volume of sale.
So yes, if this were an additional $20 per sale it might deeply cut into their margins if they aren’t a luxury product.
However, I struggle to imagine that every, or most, or even many, of a hotels sales are anniversaries, or similar kinds of events, that would deserve such additional servicing.
If the total profit is $200k, a single $20 (or relatively few) instance is nothing, regardless of high or low margins.
Specially servicing these rare, one-off events, is exactly how you exceed customer expectations without running your business into the ground.
Consider going back now that you have given them that scathing Yelp review. That way you'll be able to have better steaks and feel vindicated. Heck, dump on them on Google too, and write to the local newspaper just before V day (old people read those letters!). If you have any impact it will at least be to have fewer competitors for a table. Heck, pay money to have them given bad reviews, it's really cheap.
Yes I'm being tongue in cheek here, but try not to cut off your nose to spite your face.
V day and M day are the absolute worst times to go out for dinner, anywhere half decent is full and the kitchen is super stressed so they have reduced menus that are easier to cook (not possible with steak...). If you must go, you have to speak to the manager beforehand, tell them how important this is, remind them you come often, get a specific table, etc.
> V day and M day are the absolute worst times to go out for dinner, anywhere half decent is full and the kitchen is super stressed so they have reduced menus that are easier to cook (not possible with steak...).
Why is that, exactly? A whole bunch of tables with two people at them sounds like it should be a bit easier than a normal busy day. And you know far in advance that you need to be well-staffed. Are valentines couples very demanding? Are there other troubles?
Credibility tends to take a hit when you do that. People interpret it not as the restaurant necessarily being bad as much as you having a bone to pick.
I think all of the above should be the expected experiences, including expecting poor customer service and shopping at stores on Black Friday and subpar dining on Valentines. Businesses are human and every business has their most stressful periods, knowing that can help you time your interactions (especially when you need perfection or complicated requirements).
If you were with me for the good times, then ditched me at the first problem and shit talked me and turned other people against me, then described yourself as “a loyal friend”, I think I’d raise an eyebrow.
If you were with me for the good times, then ditched me at the first problem and shit talked me and turned other people against me, then described yourself as “a loyal friend”, I think I’d raise an eyebrow.
Intent matters. Let's say your partner is trying to toss a coke bottle into the garbage bin. Let's say your partner misses and bonks you on the nose with the bottle instead. Do you leave? What if your partner, instead, had been trying to throw the bottle at you in anger?
> I see the opposite happen all the time in software development.
The software development world is plagued with the idea that developer productivity and happiness comes before all other considerations. Can you imagine a car manufacturer building something that get's 2 mpg but excusing it with "but it was quicker to build"? Yet we have electron.
> Can you imagine a car manufacturer building something that get's 2 mpg but excusing it with "but it was quicker to build"? Yet we have electron.
Bad example, ever try fixing your own car and wondering why they made it so hard to access some parts? And then you try to replace some bit and break some smaller bit, like a plastic clip or something. And you can't buy the smaller bit anywhere. Most cars are built for ease of assembly, not ease of repair for example.
“Any customer can have a car painted any color that he wants so long as it is black.” — Henry Ford
Meet the customers basic requirements and you compete on price first 9 times out of ten. Look at the airline industry, prices have steadily declined since deregulation and creature comforts right along with them. If Americans could buy standing room only tickets they would in droves.
Things are more complex than that. People will pay for a standing room only flight because the cost is so high. If I could fly standing room for $5 instead of $150 I'd be more interested in paying $20 a seat.
And yet everyone cites Amazon as the gold standard. Have you tried to use their disconnected, inconsistent, terrible user interfaces? It's like you're talking to a completely different company switching between departments of the same store.
"Get this item tomorrow and without shipping costs when you join Prime! Free for 1 year! Click this big button to join Prime! Or click this tiny link to go to the 'Are you sure you don't want Prime?' page interrupting your checkout process!"
A while ago I started getting advertisements for Prime for Students interrupting every checkout. I graduated nearly a decade ago. Though I did recently start grad school and I did in fact sign up for Prime so maybe Amazon knew before I did.
The thing is that Amazon is emphatically not a small business. Amazon's customers are a pretty captive audience, and have to put up with what they got.
Same with other giants / monopolies; this is why monopolies are bad for customers.
You are correct. And the cause is that it costs money to design good interfaces. Most people don't understand the value of craftsmanship, and are not willing to pay for it.
Exactly, how do you remove impediments for the customer along their journey. Ideally once they have made their decision, they should have a front park, have the car door opened for them, and be carried at speed towards the counter for pickup whilst their order is being taken. Every moment for pause is a opportunity for them to leave the path.
They did - explicitly in the section that starts "Obsessing with Customer’s Experience is a Win."
That being said, when writing engaging content, it's usually better to show, rather than just tell. That's also what they did here.
Last thing - they wanted to convey the message to as many people as possible. If the article was entitled "Put the concerns of the customer first before yours," virtually no one would read it (and no one on a site like HN, Twitter, or Facebook would click through to it).
It does say so: "he told me the experience his customers have while visiting him was very important to him and it started when they pulled into the parking lot".
A month ago my wife and I passed a business while on vacation to a location we frequent. She remarked "oh it looks like they closed down, that's too bad" Upon closer inspection there were in fact open, the two employees present had parked in the back, leaving a completely empty front parking lot.
The parking location is not all to blame, but at the time I remarked "the employees should really park out front to help it appears as though there are customers".
Obviously if your lot is frequently full this isn't an issue. This was in a rural location where most likely that never happens as it was a large lot, and not a business that would see surges of customers.
It might even be an effective strategy to add a few extra cars to your parking lot, so it always has at least a moderate number.
When I worked at a mall food court, I noticed something interesting: during slower periods, sometimes one restaurant would have a line while other restaurants would have no customers at all. And not always the same restaurant. I attributed it to customers seeing that one place had customers, then inferring that it must be open and it must be one of the better places to eat.
Popularity isn't a very reliable indicator of quality, but it's not totally invalid either. If a place is always deserted, it's probably not very good. If it's always busy, it's likely that people are willing to wait for a reason.
Reminds me of a time I was searching for parking in downtown Washington, DC. Block after block was full. I eventually came to a street that had no cars parked at all. Jackpot, right? Must be some obscure rule prohibiting parking there. I kept looking. Still no luck, so I finally went back to the empty street. I carefully studied the signs and concluded that it was legal to park there. I got out of my car and paid. By the time I was done paying, the entire block was full of parked cars!
That happens in SF all the time. People will see a temporary no parking sign and drive on by. Half the time, if you read it, it’s either not in effect yet or has already expired.
If there are no cars there, people assume others confirmed you can’t park there!
This is like the old adage. "If you truly believe in market efficiency, you would never bother to bend over to pick up a $100 bill because if it were real, someone else would have picked it up already!"
Back when I used to tend open bars, I’d do something I called “priming the tip jar.” Throw a five and some ones in and folks seemed to be more willing to tip. Probably mostly because it didn’t just look like an empty glass sitting right-side up–it made it obvious it was a tip jar without having to put a tacky “Tips” sign on it.
Ha, I used to do the same as a child when I took part in the yearly charity run. I had to ask everyone in the street to contribute either a fixed amount or an amount per lap - so I made sure to get my parents to sign up for a (relatively high) per round amount as my first sign-ups, then hope the next ones to take part would do the same.
Buskers do the same, priming their hat or tin or whatever to show what they feel an appropriate donation would be. They also regularly ‘groom’ their donations so as to not look too successful.
What do you suppose someone is doing when they have a box for "donate to save the animals" or similar, and they never empty it even though it is stuffed full of money? Some sort of manipulation that escapes me, or something counterproductive? I noticed today that they put a piggy bank on top.
Some of those boxes are placed and maintained by the charity, not the owner of the location. So if the charity hasn't been back to empty it for a while, it might fill up. I doubt it's deliberate.
That's rare. Usually it's actually just that the charity is selling "ad space" and the venue keeps the donations in exchange for paying a fee to the charity. It's a weird system.
I see that a lot - and have the same behaviour, in that I'm less likely to go to a restaurant or pub when it has no visitors, that seems to give a subtle signal that they're not really good.
What I guess you could do as a business owner is wear plainclothes / take off the apron and have a coffee with your own staff. Mind you it'll look quite obvious in a lot of cases due to the staff wearing e.g. aprons or other accessories that infer they're staff.
But giving away some free coffee or something just to break the ice (or 'prime' as another commenter called it) will be a good strategy as well. It requires a bit of pushing which some people will find annoying but still, it'll be worth it.
As a student I worked in a restaurant briefly. The manager drilled into us that the the front should be full, maybe with one gap and the back should be cleared ASAP.
I gave this advice to my local Subway, which was open at 7am for breakfast but everything else in their little strip-mall opened later. The place looked deserted, and I was often the only customer.
"Park in front in the morning, then move to the back before lunch, it'll make the place look busy"
From that week forward, there were often other customers when I stopped in for breakfast. Manager said breakfast business had easily doubled. I got a bunch of free subs out of that deal. ;)
I think the real point it's making isn't about the parking, it's the countless little things that business owners do that add friction to the customer transactions.
Something as simple as not parking right in front might not make a huge difference, but that mindset, compounded over months and years, will.
In terms of really literally interpreting this article... please do make sure not to park (or allow to be parked) really shifty cars in your lot. If a car has dust on it so deep that a passing leaf leaves its story on it then the lot gets a sketchy feeling.
Also, psychology is weird... if there are a bunch of spots near to your business pick one reasonably close but always leave the best one for customers - if there are cars parked close to the entrance but the best spot is open then customers will walk in with a bit of a buzzing high from managing to nab the primo spot. Aaaand if there is a tree that drops crap during spring/fall, park under it so no customer gets stuck with sap on their car since that can colour their entire interaction.
Having the lights on and a few cars out front to let customers know this is a safe location is definitely important in a lot of businesses. This article seems to want to make a point about subscription cancellation instead, though.
Former VIP host here. The club line isn't really for advertising. Paying people to stand in lines at clubs hasn't been an effective strategy since the 80's maybe.
Now the line is a (punishment + holding cell) for dudes who have to buy their way out of the line by opting for bottle service.
Ideally for the club it moves just fast enough that the patrons in line don't give up and go somewhere else.
Are you saying at any point in time someone in line can indicate to the bouncer they will buy bottle service and enter immediately? That sounds highly improbable...
Clubs in my city don't pay people to stand in line either, you either reserve your group in the guest book or didn't and are waiting longer for an "opening". Some clubs are at legal capacity and a line builds up but mostly they frisk everyone and ask for ID which takes a while and causes a line to form, which also benefits the club as a sort of popularity advertisement to others on the street.
Nutella Cafe tried to pull the same thing when they opened their first location in Chicago, and would stop taking orders until the line built up out the door again. I'm guessing the strategy (rightfully) backfired, as the cafe looks generally empty these days.
Lines are great for hype, but don't try to artificially create them at the cost of customer experience.
I was interning in Chicago when they first opened. I remember looking at the menu and it was so thoroughly boring (i.e. normal bakery/diner goods, but made with Nutella) that I didn't even consider going there.
It always blew my mind how long the line was when I walked by. It had to be just tourists who were willing to wait in that long of a line just for the novelty of being able to say they've been inside an official, Nutella-branded store.
Santana Row is fascinating. It looks to me like it was manufactured to please the "traditional" rich crowd. The people going there are very distinct than the typical engineers of Silicon Valley.
That's why the trick of parking a nice car on a street wouldn't work in SF, Palo Alto or Mountain View.
There isn’t a lot of traditional rich in San Jose, they mostly hang in Atherton through Palo Alto, and then in the city and north bay. Santana row attracts (or did 15 years ago) a lot of Chinese and Indians, but they are mostly new rich.
In a world of Ubers and Self-driving cars, are cars in a lot a great indicator of popularity? What kind of visual indicators from afar can a business put out? It may be more of a future question.
If there's tons of customers lining up each morning at opening, sure, park elsewhere. Otherwise the owner should definitely take the best space to show someone is there.
Empty parking lots are more common than full. Empty means there's nothing there.
The last example is the best - that making your service hard to cancel means your customer's enduring memory is of pain. And it validates the customer's decision to leave, because there must be other better options if you are so desperate to stop them going.
When a customer phones up to cancel, we do it immediately and make sure they know there are no hard feelings on our side. We ask if there was anything we could have done better, and tell them we'll still be here if they ever need us again. We get a significant number of customers return.
I have a terrible experience with your product, I don't want to repeat it. I'm going to try everything I can to keep my new coworkers from repeating that experience.
But there's something to be said for reversible decisions. Any decision that's cheap to change, you shouldn't make it expensive by putting a bunch of energy into. Just pick a fucking color for the shed. It's not important.
I hated your product but I can drop it like a rock, maybe I let my coworkers decide for themselves. And who knows, maybe you fixed the thing that drove me nuts, or this company has a different problem set that doesn't bump into the same things. Or maybe there's some poorly documented solution to the problem that people here know that we didn't.
Not exactly the same, but it's one of the prime reasons that I don't have a Costco membership: I hate when I go with members and after they pay you are treated like a criminal as they scan your receipt and check all the items in the cart. I also avoid Fry's Electronics for the same reason.
I worked at costco during college. The receipt checking stops a significant amount of shrinkage. At these warehouse stores it's surprisingly easy to walk out the door with large items you wouldn't be able to take at places like Best Buy. We caught people stealing washing machines, tvs, 4-packs of tires, etc. It helps keep costs down to have a quick verification check.
As a member I love it. I want it to be as hard as possible to steal from them, because ultimately I will be paying the cost for theft from them, so it saves me money.
I mostly agree, but my personal pet peeve are stores that treat small backpacks as somehow distinct and more of an indicator of theft than giant purses.
If you want to ban bags, do like, say, the Pearl Harbor Memorial and explicitly ban any bags over some certain set of dimensions.
I’ve never had a problem bringing a shoulder bag or small backpack into a store. I’ll infrequently ride a bicycle to Target, Home Depot, Walmart, a gas station or the local grocery store and put everything in my bag after I check out.
At stores with self checkouts, I don’t really see the difference because they’re already placing trust in you anyways.
Costco is a membership store so they have the right to condition your membership on showing the receipt at the door, but at Fry's you can walk right past the door checker if you wish and they have no right to detain you as long as you haven't done anything illegal (like steal an item) since private citizens (like store security) has no right to detain you.
They do a simple count of items you have against what's on the receipt. If the count is off, I may have left something at the register. As well, if I have something large they offer assistance to get it loaded. I have no issues with this check and find it helpful.
I think this can be a two way street. I don't own a retail business, but I feel like, as a general rule, clients who complain about things like parking tend to not be the best clients.
I think it's totally valid in the sandwich shop example, where people will literally choose something else based on what they have to walk past to get to your door.
But for a professional service where you have an ongoing relationship worth potentially thousands of dollars per year, if someone is put off by a lack of front row parking, what other utterly trivial things are they going to find fault with? Those tend to be the clients that ask for the world and get it at a bargain and then still complain about the bill.
It's not that I'm not happy to go the extra mile for good clients, but there are definitely good clients and not good clients and creating a rule that you should always delight everyone all the time means you're going to waste a lot of time trying to delight people who complain about having to walk across the parking lot...
This is stretching the metaphor to the point of absurdity, but in some cases removing parking can actually improve business. This is apparently because the best customers are locals who walk or bike.
Haha, this is where I was going with my point, which is that you absolutely do not want to please everyone who walks through the door (unless your business success is based solely on the number of people who walk through the door), you want to please the people who are your ideal customer, so that you can focus on them and not have to waste any time pleasing people who can't be pleased because they're at the wrong business.
But keep in mind that not everyone who cares about parking complains. I can think of several Chicago places I really like, but tend to actively avoid because it's hard to get parking. There doesn't have to be a complaint or even an active finding of fault for silly-seeming stuff like this to drag your business.
> that not everyone who cares about parking complains.
To that point people who complain are often the canary in the coal mine for larger issues. I am a big complainer. Typically in the end I get thanked for bringing things to a businesses attention. And I am a good customer. My largest 'reward' to date was a $5000 amount from a large german car manufacturer. They said 'we have never done this before'. What I said started out as a complaint. At first they were not really responsive. I finally brought home (successfully) that I was doing them a favor and that their dealer (a luxury car dealer) did not handle things the way they should have with a recent transaction.
I complain all the time at Whole Foods (where I spend a ton of money). Things just jump out at me. That said not everyone is me. Will say that I have owned a small business in the past. For every person that voiced a complaint there could be a hundred who don't open their mouth honestly. That's what I have found.
People think they shouldn't complain in a restaurant as another example. No the restaurant would rather have the complaint than you not returning or telling others. It's their chance to make things right and buy loyalty. Same story 'thank you for bringing this to our attention here is a $100 gift certificate'.
It's a metaphor for a general way of thinking -- prioritizing the needs of your customers, ensuring they have the best experience you can provide them. Parking in this way may or may not have any impact on customer relationships, but if you are someone who does this regularly, you are likely someone who looks for other minor ways to improve the experience for your customers.
It's a bit amusing that if you look at the picture of the parking lot showing where the author's dad worked and where he parked, his parking spot is not way off away from everything else, it's actually in what would be prime parking location for some other businesses' customers. I feel like there's a lesson about externalities there.
As a small business owner, I saved hundreds per month by not driving to work at all. I biked or walked. To enable this, I intentionally purchased a home within walking or biking distance from the office and located the business is a town with a low enough cost of business to allow that.
Yeah, but that home near your business could have been a paying customer. The article I just read would rather you buy a home far from your business. :)
I used to do it most of the time during the summer, living 2 miles away from my workplace. (Now I work from home, so "going to work" means rolling out of bed and grabbing a laptop, modulo getting the kid ready for daycare.) I'd highly recommend it - aside from getting exercise & outdoor time, feeling refreshed each time you get into work, avoiding all the rush-hour traffic (in my area, getting over the Shoreline/101 bridge in a car could take as long as the entire bike ride in), and not needing to find parking, you also feel like you're doing something good for the environment, and my workplace had a program where they donated to charity every time you biked/walked/scootered/rollerbladed in.
Like many other "nice to have" things, it's a matter of making it a priority. I'd had an hour commute when I worked in downtown Boston, and when I moved out to Silicon Valley, I told the realtor that was showing me around "No more than 15 minutes away from work." He was like "15 minutes? That means Mountain View, Palo Alto, or some parts of Sunnyvale. It'll cost you a lot." I said "I'm prepared to pay."
Would be nice if cities were built in a way that not just a select few high-earners could walk or bike to work, though. Right now, every person that moves into bike commuting distance of the major employers tends to displace someone who needs to move further away (oftentimes much further away); only way to avoid that is with more density.
I work from home at least 2 days a week so there is that ;)
I totally agree with your description about the opportunity to be close to work. It's sort of sad that those who are often struggling with other things, career, money, are also the folks who can't afford to save time by being close to work.
Your inability to do so is the result of infrastructure, zoning, and parking minimum rules your (and your predecessors') politicians put in place, unfortunately.
Incidentally I built a site mapping homes for sale and rent over transit and bike routes (not roads) for Ireland, would it be useful for Scotland as well?
Commute distance, legality (biking from city to city on the interstate is a big no-no), inability to shower after a ride, weather (I'm looking at YOU, Scotland!), medical conditions, take your pick.
If you're in a major city it just isn't feasible to purchase a home within walking distance of your business. In the Seattle area, for example, house prices would be easily over a million for anything nearby
In a 5-why's sense it's almost always feasible for you to purchase a home within walking distance of your business, it's just not feasible for everyone to purchase a home within walking distance of their workplace. Home prices are over a million dollars for anything nearby? Get a job that can support a million-dollar home - $1M requires an annual income of about $200K to be affordable, which is easily doable at Google/Amazon/Microsoft/Boeing in the Seattle area. Can't get a job at one of those? Get a job at one of their smaller competitors, become a top contributor, get known in the field, and make some friends who work there. Lack the relevant skillset for that? Learn it - there's a wide open Internet searchable by Google and a lot of textbooks on Amazon where you can teach yourself the sort of theoretical CS that these companies desire. That's only 3 whys. You could also probably have substituted "rent an apartment" instead of "buy a house" and the number of employers that pay you enough to afford it would go up significantly.
A lot of people don't want it that much, and that's fine - that's why not everybody does live within walking distance of their employer. But if you want something enough, there are paths you can take that open up the possibility, you just need to be prepared to sacrifice in other areas.
This is a major oversimplification that is not at all feasible for most people. Sure, I could theoretically get an engineering position at Amazon, buy one of the highly desirable multimillion dollar properties within walking distance that sell before they're even on the market, sell my current house, move my family and possessions, and so on. How reasonable do you think that recommendation really is for most people? Also, this is talking about people running their own businesses, and I certainly don't run Amazon or have the funding to both open my own business anywhere near Seattle as well as purchase a house within walking distance. Sure, you can skew the entire scenario and say it's reasonable to work for a major company as an engineer rather than own your own company, rent an apartment rather than buy a house, and make any number of other changes but that isn't really what is being discussed
Also, talk about putting all your eggs in one basket. Over-extending like that is a good way to become a slave to jobs you actually hate just to afford a lifestyle you forced upon yourself.
Obviously some people thrive in that situation. But sounds naive to not realize how few people can or want to take that gamble.
If you run your own business you often have a much easier pathway to living close to work: move your business. Commercial real estate rents often fall off even faster than residential ones do as you move away from the city center, and the competition from other local businesses tends to thin out. If it's a desirable and affordable place for you to live, it's likely a desirable and affordable place for your customers to live, which makes it an ideal place to situate a local business.
And being flexible with your lifestyle and assumptions so that you can get what you really want in life is exactly what is being discussed here.
A small (non-growth) business owner should really never need to drive to work. Before they start or buy the business, choose where they live and where the business is going to be carefully.
That would be nice. Unfortunately, in some areas such as Seattle where I'm currently located, you would have to live hours away from any major cities to find anywhere where you could open a business and purchase a house walking distance from your business without a million plus dollars
Old quote, can't rememeber where I first heard it:
"At universities, the employees get better parking than the customers".
Although it wasn't true at my alma mater, where the only difference was that for staff and faculty the university would deduct the parking fees from your paycheck. For your convenience.
My parents owned a business, which I worked in sometimes. Working elsewhere I do really notice that employees capture a lot of benefits which perhaps should go to customers...
I feel you could make an equal case for the government/lenders being the customer.
I think you're probably right about students not being the product, they're more of a raw material?
I'm being slightly cheeky, but I don't think the relationship is best viewed as the student being the customer, certainly not if the degree is the product.
The credit card/tab point is a really good one, IMO. There's something really offensive, as a customer, about walking into a business and being immediately subject to the assumption that I'm there to rip them off. Why would I want to patronize your business if you want to treat me like a criminal?
A particularly infuriating example of this is bookstores that demand you turn in your bag at the desk. I just walk out.
This will hopefully go away as soon as the US moves away from antique payment systems with huge interchange fees. In other countries you just tap on the terminal to pay (either MC/VISA/Apple/local EFT system) and it completes in real time.
The idea that I would give my credit card digits (and CCV!) to a bartender for safe keeping is almost physically painful. I'm the one thinking they are the criminal (and not without justification given the rate of card fraud). I don't let restaurant servers walk away with my card now.
(And split bills should be automatic, they just don't do it because they get bigger tips that way.)
Where are the book stores that ask you to leave your bag? Except for teens maybe it seems weird.
I've never had a problem with service staff splitting bills in America. I've heard it's a problem in Europe, but then again I've also heard that tipping is not commonplace there.
IME split bills are super easy in France/Italy/Switzerland, the waiter brings their EFT machine to the table and tap tap tap all done. An no, you don't tip in Europe, even spare change, but the quality of service is more dependent on labour market conditions and choice of restaurant (i.e. wages are very high in CH and staff are hard to come by).
Bill splitting is a major pain in Australia and I've done the whole yelp outrage thing after rude staff have refused to split the bill (when we said at the beginning!). I much prefer Denmark, where the bill is always split, and you have to take someone's bill to pay for them. See also: a year of living danishly https://www.amazon.co.uk/Year-Living-Danishly-Uncovering-Hap...
> An no, you don't tip in Europe, even spare change
Highly dependent on the region. In Germany and Austria [the only countries that I'm sure about :)], you're not as expected to tip as in the US for example, but it's still customary to do so.
If your service was bad, you don't tip. If it was okay, you may or may not tip a small amount. If it was great, yes, absolutely, you do tip.
> i.e. wages are very high in CH
That's probably because wages in CH are very high in general. Kind of evens out, seeing as the cost of living is equally high compared to most other countries in central Europe.
I think it's not uncommon for people to forget to close their tab at bars and accidentally walk out without their card. I feel just fine with handing over my card upon opening a tab.
Many bars will have a default policy for unclosed tabs. My local bar assumes a 10% gratuity and calls it a day, so walk out as you please. Though it's the type of place where the bartenders notice 20+% tips and will serve you significantly better for it.
This always catches me out. Places where you don't pay first are an exception so whenever I go to one that doesnt I always find my self walking to the door until I remember "oh wait, I haven't paid yet"
I think that really depends on where you live. Here it is basically the other way around, you order, you drink, order some more, and before leaving you pay the bill, with the bartender keeping a tab of what you ordered (these days with a mobile POS). The only "regular" exception is when they're about to close the place, then they often ask you to pay on delivery.
Except the "our card reader is broken, we can only accept cash"-surprise, I can only remember three occasions this actually caused some hurdle for me in the past decade-and-a-half.
It's extra rude if you consider the history. Bookstores of old had a counter where you entered, you placed your order and if the book was in stock someone would go and get it (or in case you ordered ahead they'd get your pre-packaged order for you). Then we figured that self-service is the way to go: rely on the customer to do their own orderpicking, en-passent exposing them to a lot of marketing and hopefully selling some more books.
So now, on top of being required to do the work of the bookstore employees you also lose the benefit of the doubt and are being treated as though you are a common thief.
Industry secret: lots of theft from bookstores is by employees.
That's also lots of theft from convenience stores. 20 years ago I had a friend who, as manager, knew that the cameras didn't catch what happened when the lights were turned off at the end of the day. And he had the key... I made sure never to go to that store, either before or after closing time.
Since he lived closer to the mountains than I did, I was over at his house a lot. Stolen items were all over the house, and it seemed possible that he would be caught eventually. We had both recently moved to the area from several states away (not intentionally, we were both surprised) and it would have been easy for a cop to imagine that we were in cahoots. If I get arrested I want it to be for a good reason...
Your should have turned him in - for your protection. My uncle had a roommate pulling something like that. (the roommate was actually a cop who would find open doors and then rob the place while checking out why the alarm was going off). My uncle figures that given how quick his roommate was arrested after he turned his roommate in that they already know his roommate was doing something and were just looking for evidence because there is no way he wasn't involved in the crimes.
I don't think the two situations are that similar. I'd turn in a dirty cop in pretty much any context, but probably not a friend since junior high for theft.
So bookstores of old basically provided the service of Amazon? Today people who prefer bookstores to ordering online typically do so because they want to browse the shelves of books.
A friend detests the idea of warehouse clubs (Sam’s or Costco in the U.S., for example) checking receipts as he, the customer, walks out the door because he takes it as being under the assumption that he is a common criminal.
Some warehouse stores may treat you that way, making you prove innocence with your receipt. But don't take it as given that this will happen. The Sam's I've been to spends about 2-3 seconds 'checking' receipts. They are very clearly just acting as greeters, not inquisitors.
they can't force you to participate in the receipt checking, you can refuse, and you are free to leave. Because those places are clubs, they can take your membership away and deny you entry in the future, but once you pay for something, it's yours, and they can't search you or your belongings against your will; unless they wish to make an allegation that they saw you steal something, in which case they can tell that to a police officer.
I found that example odd, as in my experience the amount of bars that don't hold your card while a tab is open is in the minority (I don't go to that many, but I actually can't think of any nearby that DON'T take your card). Sometimes I'll just order and close out as soon as I walk in, sometimes I'll hand them my card and close out at the end, but I've never felt that I was being treated like a criminal
I think they mean specifically if the bartender asks you to open your tab before taking your order and/or pouring your drink. For what it's worth I don't think I've ever experienced this, but I could see it being somewhat off-putting.
In reference to making it hard to quit a service... "In reality, it is a great way to ensure a customer never comes back and likely does not recommend the company to others. This approach is trading short term greed for long term growth. A leader obsessed with customer experience would make sure canceling their service is painless as it will likely lead to revenue in other ways -- counterintuitive right?"
I want to believe. But seeing how painful it is to leave Facebook + iCloud, I find this hard to believe. It feels idealistic, but I wonder if the data says otherwise. People are lazy. It's unethical. But people are lazy.
I will say that my experience with gyms and their cancellation processes is awful. "We recommend sending a certified letter to cancel your membership," for example. It only makes me not want to go back to the same one when my circumstances change. And I'm unlikely to give referrals because you basically kick me in the nuts on the way out, just to try to scam an extra month or two of unused gym time.
Yeah, I am curious about this as well. I can say that I _would_ be more likely to recommend a service that is easy to cancel, but I am curious if that is enough to offset the people who don't follow through. It probably depends on market and demographic, but it would be cool to see some data.
Many of the "meal box" companies make the cancellation process very difficult, and it's one of the factors I use when deciding not to do business with a company. However, I agree that I am likely in a very small subset of users, and the vast majority are too lazy or not knowledgeable enough about these tactics to care
"Morning dropoff is stressful, to say the least, we are always late, my kids never cooperate,..."
I know this is just a throwaway comment in the article but my god does it bug me when parents use their children as an excuse for being late. Yes, kids are sometimes tough to get out the door but it's your fault that this somehow catches you by surprise every morning.
Not sure if you're a parent, but presumably if you were, you'd know there are days when no amount of planning can make things go smoothly. Sometimes kids just refuse to cooperate. Have some empathy.
Not having children doesn't mean you're not allowed to criticize parents for poor behaviour. Regardless, I am a parent to two young children and have done the morning drop offs to school/day care every morning for the last 6 years. Yes sometimes in life being late is inevitable. If it's a recurring pattern though, you're screwing up.
> Not having children doesn't mean you're not allowed to criticize parents for poor behaviour.
That is exactly what it means. People without children have absolutely no idea what they are talking about and have no means of acquiring that knowledge except by having a child.
We're veering sharply into off-topic territory here, but: I don't need to be a helicopter pilot to know that if I see one stuck in a tree, someone screwed up.
Yes, there are many things about being a parent that you can't truly know or understand until you experience it for yourself, but that doesn't mean that only a parent can see when another parent has screwed up.
Ironically, this sort of outrageously absolutist assertion sounds like exactly the kind of thing a parent would say to their child to quash a debate about their decision making.
So I can't criticize law enforcement because I'm not a LEO? I can't criticize a politician because I'm not in politics? I can't criticize a woman because I'm not female myself? I can't criticize a parrot owner because I don't own a bird? This is an absolutely ridiculous line of reasoning
>People without children have absolutely no idea what they are talking about and have no means of acquiring that knowledge except by having a child
So a male doctor can't be a gynecologist because they have "no idea what they are talking about and have no means of acquiring that knowledge except by having" female genetalia? I can't have any idea what it's like owning a parrot except by owning a bird? Again, this is absolutely absurd. Having a child does not enter you into some elite class of individuals that no one else can understand, and it's perfectly acceptable for me to criticize you despite not having children myself
In my experience, the least informed always have the strongest opinions. The well informed see all te complexities and know "it's not that easy". Reminds me of this quote:
“The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wise people so full of doubts.”
I genuinely feel bad for your children. You see yourself as somehow metaphysically enlightened and beyond reproach by non-parents, just by virtue of having them - I can't imagine how tyrannical you are in your relationship with them.
By this standard, people who have not had experience or learning in a given domain are just as qualified in that domain as those who have. It is a rejection of all knowledge.
Wow, you sound like a major, self centered narcissist at the very least. There is nothing special about having children, and there is nothing you can learn that I cannot. If you really do have children I feel bad for them. In another comment you said that if I'm really concerned about the environment I should kill myself. You clearly have some issues to work through, and I wish you the best
Personal attacks like this are a bannable offense on HN. Moreover, you got into two of these petty flamewars on HN within 24 hours. That's seriously not ok, and it looks like you've done this in the past as well, so I've banned this account until we get some indication that you want to use HN as intended. If that's the case, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and say so. We're happy to unban anyone who gives us reason to believe that they'll follow the site guidelines in the future.
Of course anyone can criticize anything they want to. But generally they'll just sound stupid to anyone who actually knows the space. I've never heard a non-parent make a remotely sensible criticism about parenting. I've never heard a non-programmer make a sensible statement about programming, etc. Parents aren't an "elite class of individuals" - we simply have experience non-parents don't. Non-parents talking about parenting are as a rule hilarious examples of the Dunning–Kruger effect. (I'm not a psychologist, so psychologists would probably consider that last statement a hilarious example of the Dunning-Kruger effect :))
While I absolutely agree that there is a ton of bad behavior in the world from people ignorantly pontificating on things outside their wheelhouse, it is incredibly arrogant and ignorant to suggest that non-parents know nothing about parenting. It just doesn't even make logical sense.
If you are constantly late for everything and always blame it on your kid, you are doing something wrong. You should know by now that things always take longer than expected with a kid, and plan accordingly. No, you will not always get it right, and that's fine. Occasional lapses are expected and accepted. But if it becomes a regular pattern, you are simply shifting blame for your poor time-management skills onto a child that does not deserve that finger pointed at them.
If you are going to discount my opinion out of hand, I suppose I can't keep you from doing that. But, my opinion happens to agree with that of a parent upthread, so... take that as you will, I suppose.
> I've never heard a non-parent make a remotely sensible criticism about parenting
Really? What about children of truly abusive parents (who are not themselves parents)? Are their critiques of their parents as parents not remotely sensible?
I'm not at all in favor of people aggressively policing the parenting practices of others. I just don't think Dunning-Kruger applies at all here, because everyone (except orphans) has some significant experience with the practice of parenting - even if it is only as the parented, you can still form cogent opinions about the practice. It's not some high expertise domain like programming, it's literally human nature.
It doesn't even have to be as extreme as abuse. For example, non-parents and parents alike should feel free to be critical of parents who allow their kids to misbehave in a restaurant.
In the rational sense, you have a point. I’m sympathetic to your position. I wish people were better at calmly and dispassionately weighing facts and reason, but we are largely not.
Your male OB example is really close to hitting a subject where people are sometimes angrily and even violently attached to their positions and on which some insist that men do not even have worthwhile opinions — merely because they are men. Similarly, others stake out positions that it is okay to “punch up” because they allege that ethics, propriety, and justice depend on group identity. These are utterly irrational by the same point that I believe you’re making, but knowing your audience is crucial. Good luck being heard on certain subjects.
Parenting isn’t that extreme, but a strong emotional component is present. With criticism in general, if in the audience’s view you haven’t earned the right, then you’re just running your mouth. You may have heard of Powdered Butt Syndrome: anyone who has powdered your butt does not want your opinion on money or sex. Being a parent changes everything in ways that it’s difficult for non-parents to understand. Even if a non-parent accepts this on an intellectual level, the deeper visceral appreciation is still missing.
Yes, being late is rude. Screaming children in a restaurant while others are trying to enjoy a meal is annoying. Parents should not allow their kids to behave like ill-mannered brats. To really oversimplify, becoming a parent tends to raise some parents’ tolerance to misbehavior. I can talk about gross topics over dinner that would have caused my pre-kids self to ask for a change of subject or to excuse myself from the table. Parenting can be exhausting. All relationships are challenging at times. Sometimes people choose to pick their battles.
All that said, some parents dismiss advice or criticism from other parents too. It must be nice to have your perfect kids, live in your perfect neighborhood, and send them to their perfect school. What do you know about my situation? You have X and I don’t. I have Y and you don’t.
Anyone can criticize to criticize. Doing it with love to actually help someone else is much more delicate.
Indeed. That is true for people with or without kids. If you are consistently late, you are doing something wrong. Might be not enough time, could be an unrealistic start time, who knows. But if you are always late... as they say, brother that is on you.
It can act as a cure. I have some in-laws who are better than ever since they've been forced to adhere to some strict timings around school and childcare.
On the contrary, I found that the mornings I had a wide time margin, most things went smoothly and I could enjoy the time with my children. When I was nearly late from the start, things would go bad and soon even worse. I put it down to the difference in my patience and attitude in dealing with the inevitable little hiccups. In other words, I was to blame when we were late.
It's really disheartening to me to see that, immediately after you make a comment critical of rude behavior common to many parents, all the parents pile on and assume you just absolutely must be a non-parent.
I get that being a parent means that traditional ideas of what's "a good night's sleep" can completely go out the window, but it's kinda sad that the default response is to just accept that you're going to be rude and disrespectful of other people's time.
Wish I could find the article, but I recall reading something a year or so ago that found a link between new parents and a newfound reduction in empathy for anyone outside their nuclear family. Given that, I guess this attitude shouldn't be surprising.
That’s not the most mature way to state it, but you have a reasonable point. I try to be careful about monitoring my kids’ behavior in public places. When people go for a meal out, they are paying for a nice time and not to hear screaming kids or dodge little unruly hooligans. Elsewhere in the thread, I noted that parents out of necessity choose their battles due to fatigue, selfishness, or letting small things go (but perhaps after recalibrating on what’s small). It’s as though parents’ tolerance for bad behavior increases.
Just like non-parents do not have a full appreciation for what parents go through, we parents forget what it was like before kids. Parents and non-parents tend to self-sort into disjoint social networks. Parents of school-aged kids forget what it was like to have infants and toddlers. Oh, just wait until they’re teenagers, say the helpful, encouraging grandparents.
Think about others. Put yourself in their shoes. Stop being selfish. That’s good advice for all of us, no matter where we are in life.
There's no negotiating with a young child, you're constantly anticipating their meltdowns and mitigating them as best you can.
Itchy/tight/lose/wrong-color pants/shirt/dresses/socks/shoes, not wanting to eat breakfast, decided they wanted a different breakfast after it's served, deciding they wanted to get the milk out of the fridge after telling you to do it, not wanting to brush their teeth/hair, wanting to use a different bathroom, insisting they don't need to potty while doing the peepee dance, needing to pet the cat before anything else, wanting to eat at the counter or on the porch or at the table.
I speak as a parent of a 5 year old boy.
Going through this on an everyday basis and negotiating with him has taught me so many soft-skills that no 3-day courses by <insert-famous-guru-here> will ever teach. When I look back at this stage of my life twenty years down the lane, I know I was alive :-).
Silver linings and all that....
It's not that simple. Even adding additional time doesn't always work. E.g. Some things just can't be done till moments/minutes before having to leave. If you want to do those early you have to leave early as well. Then you arrive early, and then what. So you plan from the other side as well, and that means cutting things close with x% of buffer. Sometimes that buffer isn't enough and it throws everything off. Sometimes you're all set to go, slightly early, and something pops up.
Or, all the planning goes out the window when one of them is wailing or throwing a tantrum, or is so so so eager to show you this wonderful thing they finished drawing for you. Then you have to adapt that wonderfully planned schedule/plan, so your previously-allotted buffer dwindles and next thing you know you're one new-issue away from being late.
But yeah, one of other comments mentioned. There is a difference between being late once in a while vs always.
Yes, being a bit early sometimes is a natural consequence of leaving enough time so that you're not late. Being late is much worse than being early because it is disrespectful of other peoples time.
If you're a bit early, then you get a few stress free minutes to hang out with your kid: sit in the car and sing songs together, run around the school yard, take a walk, talk about whats been on their mind lately etc.
I'm not suggesting everyone use the exact same system for being on time, but I am suggesting that just about everyone can find a system for being on time.
That sentence doesn't say it's the kids' fault! It's a list of things that make morning dropouts stressful: being late, kids not being co-operative, last-minute hassles with toys etc.
I don't think the parent was suggesting it's the kids' fault. In these situations, I think a lot of people go into a sort of "welp, this just can't be helped" mode, without assigning blame to anyone. The parent is saying that, if your lateness is a regular pattern, it is actually the parent's fault, and the parent should own up to it. (Occasional lateness does in general fall under the "welp, this just can't be helped" category.)
Put another way, while a parent would probably not actually assign blame for lateness to their child (though oh boy, do I know some that would...), they are nonetheless using their children as an excuse for their own bad behavior, which is rude and dishonest.
I have a two year old. Getting him up and going before 8 is impossible, the earliest I can get him to daycare is 8:45, sometimes much earlier or much later because he is so unpredictable day to day.
> I have a two year old. Getting him up and going before 8 is impossible
Forgive me for being blunt but: no it isn't. It might take some work over a few weeks and may mean some tough mornings, but throwing up your hands and saying "well, I guess you're the boss 2 year old!" is silly. Your two year old can't tell time and you can migrate his schedule forward 5-10mins a day if you want too. Yes, his sleeping/waking will fluctuate around a mean and you can't control that, but you can control the mean value.
Or how about taking time off, or leaving early. Gotta go pick up the kids. Gotta go to my kids function. Why do you need to take a week off? You don't have any kids lol. It's gatekeeping to the max.
+1. And don't use the car to deliver your kids. Use the bike. It is possible: There are children seats and trailers. And there are ebikes. There is little excuse for driving cars. Despite you live in countryside US, where you apparently need a truck to get anywhere.
People in urban centers, I think, don't realize how spread out much of the US is.
Yes, riding your bike in an urban area is often more or less as fast / convenient as driving. However, driving at 70mph vs biking at say 15mph, the time difference adds up very quickly once you are out in open country.
Not to mention that there is very well built infrastructure for driving, while biking often means going on that same infrastructure with a 50mph difference between you and the rest of the traffic. Basically if you are riding on a bike on a highway, you need to act as if you were invisible and expect that cars may actively try to kill you.
also my two cents: it's dangerous as all heck doing anything but driving on those roads. I almost got hit by a friend of mine who was texting and driving while I was running about 30 miles from there out in the country.
This “I don’t need a car to commute from SF to SF therefore nobody anywhere needs a car for any reason” attitude pops up at least twice a week here and is so tiring. I challenge you to do my 2 hour (each way) commute on a bike for more than a week. Happy to give you the route if you want to try it! And if you want me to just live closer to work, that’s fine too: please double my salary to enable that and I’ll get rid of my car.
Be careful, the standard response to that is "you should drastically change your lifestyle, uproot your family, and do financially irresponsible things in order to move closer to work so you can bike there". Also so, so tiring.
> There is little excuse for driving cars. Despite you live in countryside US, where you apparently need a truck to get anywhere.
You don't need a truck, but you definitely need a car (with four wheel drive in many parts).
There are millions of people who live in places that require traveling on high-traffic busy roads to get from point A to B. These roads almost never have a bike lane (bike lanes do not exist outside of large cities). On many roads I drive on (speed limit 55 mph) there is no shoulder. Combine that with roads that have sharp curves that prevent drivers from seeing more than 25 meters ahead... yea, I would not bike with a kid with me.
Airbags are good as... protection from other cars, or from driving your own car too fast, and hitting a large object. You shouldn't live a great distance from places you frequent. And there's no reason a disabled individual requires a multi-ton machine capable of going 100+mph to get around.
I once mapped my commute to work using multiple applications. 11 minutes via car, and 14 minutes via bike. However, there was no way to safely get from my house to my office. Even if I bit the bullet and spent 26 minutes on back roads, there were still major junctions that absolutely were not safe for bike traffic.
The overall point is excellent and typically misunderstood by companies large and small (think about what your customer wants, not what you want), but there's another reason to park in front when you're starting out: to make the business not look empty!
That is, early adopters may like to try out a new business, but a business with no customers, no cars etc can lead people to think it's unsuccessful/undesirable.
This is why early stage customers like to put the logos of customers on their home page.
Just closed my eyes and imagined this hell of hundreds of cars trying to relocate themselves closer to the front at irregular intervals. Few billion microseconds later some of them become self-aware and experience an existential crisis. Front Lot Stock Exchange emerges in attempt to optimize driving efficiency. 4 FLSE collapses and 23 self-poweroffs registered up to datetime.
I’m surprised this doesn’t go without saying. As a divemaster intern I never dared even park in the lot during school days. I found a spot on the street. In college I was a paintball ref. There were separate lots for employees that was farther away from customer lots.
There's always an exception. While running a brick and mortar business for 3 years, I found that when parked around the corners (out of a courtesy to my customers) I looked either out of business, closed, or dead.
Our business ran on weekends. Everyone else in our complex was closed on the weekends.
We started parking our cars up front because people were FAR more likely to come inside if it looked like other people were there.
Otherwise, we noticed that they would sometimes drive by slowly, try to peer in our windows, then drive off.
So, parking up-front for us was just marketing.
But I get it. Give the best spots to your customers if possible. The customer experience must be optimal. They aren't always right, but it can still feel good.
Did you have any flags or flyers making it clear you were open? I've walked past more than one cafe with enough tinting on the window that I'd have no idea they are open, but they put an A-frame, flag, or something else outside to make it clear they are.
This makes me circle back again to the concept of "Minimum Viable Product." It's been said that as a startup, if you're not embarrassed when you ship v1, you waited too late. But what's often not looked at is "just how embarrassed is embarrassed enough?"
Going against the concept of launching an MVP is the idea of "you only get one chance to make a first impression." Which is why a number of founders started talking less about launching Minimum Viable Products, and more about launching Exceptional Viable Products.
Those few extra details can be crucial levers to determining your product's success with customers. Of course, the key is determining which of those key details are the ones you need to pay attention to, and which ones you can pass over for now.
> "you only get one chance to make a first impression."
Yeah this always weighs upon my mind, to the point where sometimes I don't move ("perfect is the enemy of good", you can find a quote from all sides of a situation).
I think the ideal use case for a MVP is exposing it to a limited subset of users. These can be internal staff first, friends and family, or the noisy but helpful people who file a load of issues with you for another version/product. I think releasing a MVP to the whole world can be a big mistake, there are so many games out there I can't play them all. Some are fully realised in early access but others get a quick look then I never go back, even years later.
> I think the ideal use case for a MVP is exposing it to a limited subset of users.
This. So much this.
MVP has a key role in product development - but its place is not necessarily at the phase of "launch it to the public with a marketing campaign." It comes before that.
This reminds me of Jiro Ono and Jiro Dreams of Sushi [1]. He would notice, for instance, that his customers are left handed and adjust the way they then would get served.
Here in the United States, there are two major, competing home building supply stores: Home Depot and Lowes. At Home Depot, all the doors will open up when I walk up, whether they mean for them to be entrances or exits. At Lowes, only the one labelled "Entrance". I think that sums up the two companies' priorities.
>In reality, it is a great way to ensure a customer never comes back and likely does not recommend the company to others.
I've make significant lifestyle changes just because companies pissed me off enough to create a personal grudge. For example, I was an Xbox fanboy starting around 2005. Several years later I got a girlfriend and bought her an Xbox Live Gold subscription so she could play with me. It turned out not to be her thing, so I tried to cancel the service, except Microsoft made it an absolute nightmare. Reps bounced me from person to person, and several times I received a monthly bill despite the rep assuring me the account had been canceled. It filled me with such rage I canceled my own Live subscription, sold my Xbox 360, and swore off console gaming entirely. I'll be in the cold, cold ground before I give Microsoft another damn cent.
I have recently become a customer of Bulb for my energy. They won me because when I tried to sign up and this failed, they followed up with an email explaining that my existing supplier had a weird set up for my smart meter which made it impossible to take over automatically and how to get them to fix it, which appeared to have been written by a real human.
In most companies, that'd just be an error in a log file somewhere. They then followed up later to ask if things had been handled well. They also have one single, good value tariff with no option not to have green energy.
Principled, with A++ customer service and a competent mobile app, complete with a time line for switching and starting my account with them. I'm totally sold. They could be quite a lot more expensive than my existing supplier and I frankly wouldn't care given the whole experience so far.
If you advocate for the club-line effect to draw in customers so it seems popular. You’re probably the kind of person who falls for that sort of thing.
It's a great metaphor but reality seems to be that there are a lot of good practices followed by so many people that it is impossible to keep track of. A via negativa approach to this might be easier. Does someone know of a compendium of bad business practices ? Life would be a lot better if we can first avoid the bad practices , no? :-)
The overarching concept is to be conscious of when you inconvenience other people (like customers), and avoid it at much cost (but not any, of course).
This seems to be the cornerstone of Western etiquette. It can be different in Asia, where it may be more important to "save face" and let others also save face.
As a former bartender, it's not that we didn't trust you but that you may simply forget. Even taking people's credit cards AND driver licenses we'd always have one or two tabs still open at the end of the night. The author of this article is clueless.
There was a local bar in my home town that didn't, but I think just for the regulars. I remember coming in once and one of the owners said, "You have $11.50 tab from <two months ago>" ... and you didn't tell me the like ... 30 times I've been in here since then and paid my tab in full?
Occasionally there was a list on the chalk board, first and last name, of everyone who owed a tab. This was at late as 2008. This was also in a city of like 150; so not even a small town.
I remember coming in once and one of the owners said, "You have $11.50 tab from <two months ago>"
Heh, my bar is like this. Been going there long enough that I get to run a tab for a few weeks before the owner finally (jokingly) gives me a hard time about it.
Definitely. Some larger bars (that have multiple ordering stations in the venue, e.g., music venues) just swipe and store the info. Then you can order from any location, or closeout from any location. Some even let you close out by an app.
If you're a regular at a local bar and/or know the bartender (and they know you're good for a return visit with the money) it can be possible to open a tab without a card.
The only time that has happened for me is in an establishment you frequent.
A bowling league I was on for example would allow you to run a tab of drinks/food and pay at the end of the night as they know you are not going to dine and dash.
Granted that was a combination of a bar/bowling alley, but a few other bars that I used to frequent in my younger years after seeing you as a regular would also have no problems letting you run up a tab.
I have never been to a bar on my first visit that had full trust in the patrons right out of the gate, but then again I only was in that scene for 2-3 years.
My personal haunt doesn't. But then again, they're both a bar, and a restaurant, and I think for simplicity's sake they just run both types of transaction the same way (namely, bring you your bill and you pay at the end).
And this isn't just because I'm a regular. I've seen it happen plenty with people from out of town too. The only thing they'll take your ID for is their mules so you don't run off with a copper mug.
Honestly I prefer it: those places also tend to have POS computers that reliably put the right things on my tab instead of relying on the bartender's vague memory of what the guy in the corner ordered. And I can be sure that they'll accept my credit card which a lot of my neighbourhood cash-only bars will not (which is pretty important to know before it's time to pay)
Some bars keep track by updating the receipt in front of you based on what you have ordered and not take a CC upfront. Typically less crowded, mandatory seating type spots. I have never worked a bar before but I assume taking CC up front serves a dual purpose of tracking who has ordered what and making sure the patron doesn't run out on the tab.
Would guess because being at a bar is a more fluid experience than at a meal where you pick a table and stay there. Also at a bar, you tend to order at the bar and then go back to your table, so the bartender doesn't necessarily know where you are when you aren't ordering something.
It seems pretty common to forget to grab your card at the end of the night. I can imagine how easy it would be to "forget" to pay, especially if the register didn't have any of your info upfront.
I think what he probably means is that the bartender asks for the card as soon as you order a drink..( I don't know of any, every bar I've had a drink at. the bartender makes me the drink and only while I am halfway or done, does he ask if I need to start a tab?)
y, if you have a spot at the bar or a table around here they don't ask for a card up front. You just order they'll bring you a drink ask if you'd like another when you're about half finished and then add it to your tab. You ask to settle up when you're ready to go or if you say you're good when they ask you for another they will bring out your bill.
> It would be one thing if the bar was making the customer’s life easier so when they were done they could simply walk out effortlessly paying the bill but that is not the typical case.
When starting to read the article, I thought it would be either about meeting potential customers in the parkinh lot or spending that time to walk with your kid..
Sure, this would be nice - and yet, he's still sending his kid to the school. And the school is still running. It seems to make no difference in this case.
So, what are the reasons to actually focus on customer experience? When does it pay off? (Not as often as you'd like. Amazon is a prime - pardon the pun - example that once you have enough of the market, you can let customer experience go downhill, because people value convenience over experience)
It seems you skipped over any reasonable interpretation of the author's point and chose to take it as absolutely literally as possible.
My reading of the article was that you should put yourself in the shoes of your customer, and that will help you make better business choices. Small details matter.
