| The world would be a better place if if companies focused on "people", and not on "money". Of course that's unrealistic. But I don't care. I grew up believing in Star-Trek-style society. You know... "Social problems are gone; people are free to devote themselves to improving themselves; etc". I honestly believed that humanity would someday achieve this. I used to believe most people were inherently good, and that they are naturally adverse to doing unethical things, and that if they did something unethical by accident, then they would go out of their way to fix it, even if they weren't obligated to. Because it's the right thing to do. Needless to say, Real Life came as a nasty surprise. You're a bad person for not caring about That One Guy Who You Deleted 7 Years Of His Life. But hey, our capitalistic society encourages not caring, so it must be okay, right? |
First, I share your idealism. Being good to people, and humanity as a whole, is the most important thing we can do in our brief existence.
What's happened, though, is that perverse incentives that reward short-term thinking at the expense of long-term results have become the norm in large businesses.
Ship product X before it's ready because the Street wants to see some action before the end of the quarter – even though in an unfinished state, you'll destroy the product's reputation. (most people in Tablet land)
Fire an experienced sales force because they are expensive. The money saved will look great in our financial reporting – even though the resulting drop in customer service will gut our profitability for years to come. (Home Depot, Circuit City)
Adopt rigid policies around customer service. Don't empower front-line people to make things right. That might cost money – even though the lost goodwill will mean that customers will abandon the business and flock to better alternatives. (most retail chains, airlines)
But the good news is that there are companies who make a lot of money just by kind of being nice to people, creating a fair balance of profit for the company and value for the customer.
Zappos spends a shitload of money on phone support. It's a marketing expense. So everyone loves shopping at Zappos after awhile.
Amazon will disable their Prime $3.99 one-click shipping button if they've noticed that the free option has the same delivery estimate. So you can always feel safe shopping there.
Apple Stores are pretty flexible with return/exchange/warranty rules. Be polite, explain what you need, they'll often bend policy or waive repair fees. From a product perspective, Apple sits on products for years and kills them if they can't deliver a minimum level of user experience quality. So when they launch something new, they have lines out the door with people desperate to buy.
Whole Foods empowers their store managers to do the right thing – whatever that looks like for a given situation or market. So if the power goes out in the middle of a busy day, everyone goes home with free food so they can get on with life.
So as long as you're capable of seeing past the next three weeks, you can make money and be good to people. Which is what you need if you want to pay your employees' rent. Corporations are capable of doing a lot of good. But they've been hijacked by unimaginative, unproductive Wall Street morons who would kill a school bus full of children if it meant a higher return on the next five minutes of trading.