My travels of late have proven to me that there is always a cheaper way of doing business. Tonight I tried to eat ice cream and the plastic spoon bent so much it would barely hold any ice cream. I have experienced similar things (not just with knives and forks) with items that are clearly not designed to handle the job they are being asked to do.

I KNOW the owner of the business was looking at costs and decided this was a great way to save a few bucks on the P&L. However, did they ever look at it from the perspective of the actual user. Beyond the fact that it doesn’t do the job, it looks and feels cheap. Is that the message you want to send?

This isn’t limited to consumer businesses, it extends to business to business interactions. Where have you made a change lately to save money? This is the first place to look to see if it is giving you the intended benefit AND if there is any negative perception of the action. I can almost guarantee you there is, you just haven’t asked for it and your controller is too busy patting himself on the back for saving money.

Saving money is important these days. However, cutting costs at the expense of your customer is bad business.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 25th, 2009 at 1:15 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.