Something that I think is very straightforward but somehow lost upon some is that everything comes at a price, everything is a trade off. There’s nothing that is purely good and there is nothing that is purely evil. This message gets lost upon some most likely because it is difficult to see multiple perspectives and most personal experiences can be summed up wholly as good or bad.
Part of being a consumer of any product or service is that the consumer is the last person to experience the exchange and reaps only the benefits of a transactional exchange. This seems fair and logical for the buyer, as why would the buyer accept any other offer aside from one that makes sense? Unfortunately, that is not always the case with sellers, business, or services.
How is this possible? How can a business or service provide something that doesn’t make any sense? It would have to make business sense, ethical sense, moral sense, and beyond if it were to stand the test of time, would it? That is just not the case. From fast fashion brands like Zara becoming one of the wealthiest companies in our lifetime from hiding its practices in favor of profits, to tech companies emerging as arbiters of communication and advertising, all the way to small local shops that once existed and were bulldozes by superstores and Amazon, business don’t have to make sense as a whole, they just have to make sense to a customer base. The most desired thing out of a consumer, as previously mentioned, is the delivered product. That is the only thing they care about.
The same can be said of services and events. For many participants, what happens behind closed doors and after hours is none of their concern. The only concern they have is value per dollar or value per hour, measured in satisfaction or happiness. Was this a good experience? Was this a good product?
Conversely, businesses and services have to create something from essentially nothing, creating value out of something that others do not care to do. Why doesn’t everyone open a restaurant? It’s because many that do fail. Why doesn’t everyone own a business? Because business take a lot of time and energy and they always have a chance of failing.
The compromise products and services make is that the companies that provide them believe their investment will be returned and then some. There is no guarantee and each business seeks a different amount of “and then some.”
For the companies that place more emphasis on their product than their profits, it is more likely than not that the company will decline in health over time without a cash lifeline. Tech companies such as Facebook or Uber have placed incredibly large bets on their products over their profits, becoming stark exceptions to this rule. However, these exceptions are rare and businesses are constantly losing the battle between servicing consumers and staying alive. Without capital, a noble business is just volunteer work.
This is where premeditated compromise is necessary. If a business finds itself faltering or struggling, the only thing it can do to save itself is to provide a better service or product. Some companies try the opposite approach, of reorganizing finances and charging higher prices or finding lower costs. This tends to be a short term solution that only works if it buys the company enough time to create a better product or service.
How can a company compromise to create a better product or service? Some of this has to do with listening to customer feedback and honing in on what makes their company unique or special. Some times it relies on critical investigation and discovering latent reasons why clients enjoy the service or product. And most obviously it can do with changing the product or service to be more in line with customer expectations or satisfaction. Often times, negative or critical feedback will never be provided and only a new, proper solution can highlight deficits.
The largest compromise I am making with my casual guild in World of Warcraft is working with another guild to start a conjoint raid. The results are very promising, but the cost comes at fewer of our members are able to attend due to a shift in time and a stricter roster limit. The bet I am placing is that the experience and rewards from a successful conjoint raid outweighs the short term consequences at this time. There will be a deadline to shift gears or promise more from my product or service and this deadline must be beat with the strong community of players that should come to grow from this experience. The risks involved include losing guild members that are benched too often and irritating both the most casual and most hardcore players with a diluted vision. As time progresses, I’ll have more options to deal with these grievances and hopefully have more players to build a foundation with.
Writing, Design, Poetry 