...in such a graceless age...

Business books are full of stuff about how the Customer is King. How we live in an unprecedented time of Customer Power. How we can always move our business to another provider if we don't get what we want, when we want it, and how we want it.

Oh yeah?

I've been thinking about that from the Customer's side of the equation and it's not always the case. Yes, there are always substitutes, but they're substitutes--not the real thing. And the "real thing" is sometimes owned by people who know they have the "real thing" and don't let you forget it.

Mitchell's First Law of Economics states: "when they have it, and you need it, they can do anything they want to you." So while it may be true that I'm King, I'm also a Serf to entities who might WANT my business, but don't NEED it.

From there, all sorts of counter-intuitive things happen--and the "Customer is King" model can collapse. I was taught that you always treat the customer with respect and take the "high road" in any communications. But I have also been treated rudely by suppliers--"vendors" that allegedly see me as the Customer and therefore the main source of their livelihood.

And here's where my teaching failed me--as an individual Customer I do NOT provide any supplier their livelihood--only a piece of it. And if that supplier believes "the view is not worth the climb" (as said by my ex-boss @ Tumi) they can tell me to jump in the pond. I'm no longer King, but instead a Serf.

The challenge for us is to remember that Customers (plural) make our lives possible, and without them we're candidates for Unemployment, or Irrelevance. And while it's true we can tell anybody to Pound Sand (when I was in retail I was told I could tell one customer a year to stuff it), it's not a sound business practice in a market as small as ours.

We all need to remember that Customers are indeed King--and that the King of Kingdom A today might be King of Kingdom B tomorrow--it's a bad idea to mess with any King even if you think they're a Serf...


Pete