[chiph]

What I didn't hear was anything about the customers.

You may have heard the old saying about relationships: "If Momma ain't happy - ain't nobody happy". I think the same thing goes for a firm's relationship with their customers. If the customer isn't happy, there's no repeat sales and no positive word-of-mouth advertising, leading to decreased sales and revenue, leading to reduced shareholder value.

[whack]

You can say the same thing about 10 different factors.

"If the employees aren't happy, nothing is going to get done."

"If your suppliers aren't happy, you aren't going to have anything to build your product with"

"If the government isn't happy, they are going to shut you down"

In the abstract, they are all important. Practically, if you try to focus on everything at once, you aren't going to get anything done. One of the most important skills in any job is figuring out which areas to focus on, and the answer to this is always going to differ depending on your specific circumstances.

[enraged_camel]

No, not really. Your source of revenue is by far the most important thing to focus on. If you treat your clients well, you can charge a premium, and the additional revenue means you can pay your employees more and have more leverage when talking to suppliers.

[whack]

"No, not really. Your employees are by far the most important thing to focus on. If you have great employees who're engaged, they will build for you an amazing product/service which will blow away your competition, which your users will love to use, which you can sell at a massive premium."

We can play this game all day folks.

[TheAdamAndChe]

They didn't mention customer satisfaction because it's not always a priority, shareholder value is.

A fantastic example of this is Comcast. It is regularly voted America's most hated corporation in the country, yet because of its unique leverage in the areas that it operates, this poor customer satisfaction rating just doesn't matter. They're still able to satisfy the shareholders.

[rb808]

Incidentally I love comcast. 150mbps cable, cheap price, no outages, free hbo, X1 remote rocks. Pricing is a bit annoying (paying extra for HD) but is a great product. Just thought I'd mention it because it gets too much hate.

[ghostbrainalpha]

Never move. You are on a magical island... or the eye of the storm.

[r00fus]

As much as I dislike Comcast, I voted you up because I once also had this magic serenity for a few years.

Then I switched to Comcast for TV and it all went down the tubes. Random outages (sometimes daily), substandard speeds, Netflix speeds suffering (or stuttering) at peak times, etc.

Who knows whether this just reversion to the mean, or the techs botching the install. Even "reddit trick to email the Comcast VP" didn't fix it (though that did get a quick response).

[snowwrestler]

I'm guessing you have FiOS and/or at least one other wireline broadband provider in your area.

Comcast is ludicrously expensive in my neighborhood where they are the sole broadband option. It's so bad the city council is looking seriously at muni fiber.

[rb808]

Yes, most people are on FiOS in my area so comcast tries hard.

[virgilp]

> 150mbps cable, cheap price,

1Gbps download, 500Mbps upload, 10 USD/mo. How cheap is Comcast, again?

[TeMPOraL]

Exactly. Companies have figured this out long time ago. The customers whose voice matters are not the same group as the customers you are nominally serving. You can see clear examples of that not only with corporations like Comcast, but also in startup economy - often (the way I see it, more often than not), the customers-that-matter are the investors, and not the actual users.

[fjsolwmv]

Because in startups, users are a cost center and the investors are paying all the bills til runway runs out

[TeMPOraL]

That's why when they tell you they care about you as a user, they're lying.

[chiph]

The problem there are the endemic local monopolies on internet and cable rights that prevent meaningful competition. (I have no disagreement that Comcast/Xfinity aren't anyone's favorite company.)

[TheAdamAndChe]

Exactly, and in this situation, the Board of Directors would probably work diligently to maintain that which differentiates Comcast from its competition, namely political leverage and monopolistic behaviors in their areas.

It's not a failure of the Board of Directors to think this way. Its sole purpose is to provide shareholder value within the existing legal framework. Like they said in the article, those on the Board who don't produce value get removed.