{"id":27055,"date":"2015-02-26T16:59:52","date_gmt":"2015-02-26T21:59:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/?p=27055"},"modified":"2015-02-26T16:59:52","modified_gmt":"2015-02-26T21:59:52","slug":"good-news-for-your-customers-is-good-news-for-your-business","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2015\/02\/26\/good-news-for-your-customers-is-good-news-for-your-business\/","title":{"rendered":"Good news for your customers is good news for your business"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Walmart recently announced<\/a> it will be raising its wages at 1,434 of its stores \u2014 boosting the incomes of nearly 500,000 of its employees. The parent company of T.J. Maxx, Marshalls and HomeGoods followed<\/a> by announcing a wage increase for about 200,000 workers in their stores.<\/p>\n

I work for another big retailer \u2014 one with about 2,000 stores of its own here in the U.S. And for that company, this is fantastic<\/em> news. About 700,000 of our customers just got a raise! They\u2019ve now got more money to spend in our stores.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s no way that fact is not Very Good News for the Big Box chain I work for.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s\u00a0call him Bob. Bob works at a HomeGoods store and he\u2019s making nine bucks an hour. By the end of the year, he\u2019ll be making $10 an hour. That\u2019s not a huge raise, and $10 an hour still isn\u2019t really even a living wage. Bob isn\u2019t suddenly living the American Dream. But still, at the end of the week, he\u2019ll be taking home an extra $32 bucks or so. He\u2019ll have an additional $64 in every paycheck, and an additional $128 in his monthly budget.<\/p>\n

\"i60ib\"<\/a>Bob won\u2019t be spending all of that, or even most of that, in our Big Box store. But he\u2019ll be spending some<\/em> of it there. He\u2019ll finally be able to get around to some of the things\u00a0he\u2019s been putting off \u2014 the home improvements he\u2019s long wished he could make, the maintenance he\u2019s too-long deferred around the house or the apartment. The next time he comes into the Big Box it won\u2019t just be to pick up another roll of duct tape. He\u2019ll have a project<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The up-selling mantra in our company is \u201csell the project.\u201d That\u2019s a bit less sleazy than most forms of up-selling, because the aim is to send customers home with everything they need to get done what they\u2019re trying to do. They\u2019ll be happier if they don\u2019t have to make a second or\u00a0a third trip back to the store before they can finish the job. So if somebody\u2019s buying paint, make sure they\u2019ve got brushes and rollers and pans and masking tape and dropcloths. If somebody\u2019s buying a new bathroom mirror, make sure they\u2019ve got the hardware to hang it and maybe a stud-finder and tape measure. That means more sales, yes, but it\u2019s also pretty good customer service.<\/p>\n

But you can\u2019t \u201csell the project\u201d to customers who make $9 an hour working retail. Guys like Bob can\u2019t afford to buy<\/em> the project. For customers like that, the trick becomes figuring out the bare minimum they can use to scrape by or to make do. That means you can sell them duct tape and Vimes\u2019 boots,* but\u00a0you can never sell\u00a0them the cartful of stuff they\u2019ll need for a quality, satisfying home-maintenance or home-improvement project.<\/p>\n

An extra $128 a month won\u2019t mean that Bob can run wild, remodeling his kitchen with top-of-the-line appliances, oak cabinets and granite countertops. But you can still do a lot with $100. Instead of coming in to buy another roll of the cheapest plumber\u2019s tape, Bob might come in to get a decent new bathroom faucet, and maybe even a decent wrench to install it.<\/p>\n

Bob got a raise.\u00a0Bob can now spend more money in our stores. That\u2019s Very Good News for our company.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s Very Good News for a lot<\/em> of companies.\u00a0Bob has been making $9 and hour, so he has been forced to learn the discipline of thrift. Thrift borne of necessity involves the making of\u00a0conscious decisions dozens of times a day, every day. Bob is acutely aware<\/em> of every one of those decisions \u2014 every deferral and denial he has been constrained to make. And he will be just as acutely aware of what the difference between $9\/hour and $10\/hour means for every one of those decisions.<\/p>\n

That additional income \u2014 that new influx of $64 a paycheck, or $128 a month, or $192 dollars in those glorious three-paycheck months \u2014 is going to be spent. Bob has been denying himself minor luxuries and deferring minor necessities \u2014 probably even some major<\/em> necessities \u2014 and he won\u2019t need to stop and think about what he\u2019s going to do with this new income. He already knows. He\u2019s been thinking about this, constantly, for years<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Bob is our customer, so good news for Bob means good news for us. \u201cCustomers first,\u201d like our CEO always says.<\/p>\n

But this isn\u2019t how our CEO will react to this happy news for Bob and for 700,000 more of our customers. None of the above \u2014 absolutely none of it \u2014 will occur to him at all. Because our CEO, like most CEOs, has lost the ability to think of our customers as people with jobs and budgets. So he won\u2019t be thinking, \u201cWoohoo!<\/em> 700,000 of our customers just got a raise!\u201d He\u2019ll be thinking, \u201cOhnoes!<\/em> Wage increases in the retail sector could lead to higher labor costs \u2014 I must oppose\u00a0this!<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n

And if the fear of the possibility of the potential of the shadow of a slight increase in labor costs requires our CEO to fight to screw over 700,000 or 7 million or 70 million of our customers, then he will enthusiastically screw over our customers.<\/p>\n

This is why the lobbyists of the Chamber of Commerce and the National Retail Federation always fight against any increase in the minimum wage. That screws over their customers \u2014 which is stupid and self-destructive and Very Bad Business, but this is how CEOs and Chambers of Commerce think. Or how they fail<\/em> to think.<\/p>\n

We just went through an iteration of this whole process involving the Affordable Care Act. The officers, executives and local managers of the Big Box had a great deal to say about Obamacare. They predicted all manner of calamity and sky-falling \u2014 none of which came to pass. But not one of them ever, even for a second, entertained the possibility that reducing health insurance costs for tens of millions of our customers<\/em> might be good news for our company.<\/p>\n

\u201cCustomers first?\u201d<\/em> Our customers didn\u2019t enter their thinking at all.<\/em> Ever. Never once, apparently, did any of our managers or district managers or corporate officers ever entertain the possibility that, for example, people\u00a0financially constrained because they were denied health insurance due to\u00a0diabetes cannot afford to repaint the living room or to spruce up the front walkway with those spiffy paving stones.<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s not just the managers and executives at the Big Box who think this way. The managers and executives of most<\/em> companies think this way. They employ armies of accountants to strangle every last cost-cutting penny from their labor expenses, and then hire a second army of lobbyists to fight for newer, more extreme ways of cutting those costs. And that is the only lens they have for considering any public policy.<\/p>\n

The health and security and well-being of their customers never appears anywhere in their policy agenda, or in their personnel agenda.<\/p>\n

P.S.:<\/strong> \u201cBut wait,\u201d someone might say, \u201cI have an overly simplistic economic ideology gleaned from dimly remembered textbook abstractions and a denial of global realities, so isn\u2019t it fair to worry that these raises from Walmart and T.J. Maxx could produce inflationary pressure?\u201d<\/p>\n

No. No it\u2019s not. There\u2019s a simple test for whether or not any given economy faces such inflationary pressure<\/a>. Anyone who thinks that describes the context today in the U.S. is invited to attempt that test to see for themselves.<\/p>\n

\u2013 \u2013 \u2013 \u2013 \u2013 \u2013 \u2013 \u2013 \u2013 \u2013 \u2013 \u2013<\/p>\n

* From Terry Pratchett\u2019s Men at Arms: The Play<\/em> (which I\u2019ve never read, except for this bit, which well-read commenters here have posted so many times over the years that it\u2019s become a favorite passage of mine):<\/p>\n

The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.<\/p>\n

Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.<\/p>\n

But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that\u2019d still be keeping his feet dry in ten years\u2019 time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.<\/p>\n

This was the Captain Samuel Vimes \u2018Boots\u2019 theory of socioeconomic unfairness.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This isn’t how our CEO will react to this happy news for Bob and for 700,000 more of our customers. Our CEO, like most CEOs, has lost the ability to think of our customers as people with jobs and budgets. So he won’t be thinking, “Woohoo! 700,000 of our customers just got a raise!” He’ll be thinking, “Ohnoes! Wage increases in the retail sector could lead to higher labor costs — I must oppose this!” And he won’t hesitate to try to screw over 700,000 — or 7 million, or 70 million — of our customers if that’s what it takes to oppose the slightest possibility of the potential of the shadow of maybe a slight increase in labor costs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":141,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[58,36],"class_list":["post-27055","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-class-warfare","tag-greed","tag-work"],"yoast_head":"\nGood news for your customers is good news for your business<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"This isn't how our CEO will react to this happy news for Bob and for 700,000 more of our customers. 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So he won't be thinking, "Woohoo! 700,000 of our customers just got a raise!" He'll be thinking, "Ohnoes! Wage increases in the retail sector could lead to higher labor costs -- I must oppose this!" 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Jesus loves Fred far more than Fred loves Jesus, but he at least has the decency to recognize the unfairness of that lopsided relationship and he has long wished that he were better at maybe kind of sort of doing something more to correct that some day. A Baptist, an amateur, a Gen-Xer, a Gemini and a Mets fan, Fred lives in Southeastern Pennsylvania with his wife and two teenage daughters. You can reach him via email at slacktivist at hotmail dot com.\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/author\/fredclark1\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Good news for your customers is good news for your business","description":"This isn't how our CEO will react to this happy news for Bob and for 700,000 more of our customers. Our CEO, like most CEOs, has lost the ability to think of our customers as people with jobs and budgets. 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A former managing editor of Prism magazine, Fred worked in the parachurch nonprofit world for a decade and then for a decade in the newspaper biz. He began blogging in 2002. In 2003 he began writing a review of the best-selling Left Behind series. Eight years later he still hasn\u2019t finished reviewing the second book of that series and the experience has left him a broken shell of a man. Fred knows the difference between the possessive \u201cits\u201d and the contraction \u201cit\u2019s,\u201d and he is acutely bothered when others mistakenly confuse the two, yet he himself just kind of instinctively types the apostrophe whether or not it belongs there. Some feel this is his greatest hypocrisy, but those who know him better know better. He\u2019s guilty of much greater hypocrisies. Jesus loves Fred far more than Fred loves Jesus, but he at least has the decency to recognize the unfairness of that lopsided relationship and he has long wished that he were better at maybe kind of sort of doing something more to correct that some day. A Baptist, an amateur, a Gen-Xer, a Gemini and a Mets fan, Fred lives in Southeastern Pennsylvania with his wife and two teenage daughters. You can reach him via email at slacktivist at hotmail dot com.","url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/author\/fredclark1\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27055","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/141"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27055"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27055\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27055"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27055"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27055"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}