#108: Trade offs and sweet spots

This graph shows the business scenario of customer dissatisfaction. If a customer complains you can handle it one of two ways:

• Give a refund or an exchange, no questions asked.
• Make the customer justify the dissatisfaction and only the very serious will pursue indemnity.

Or you could have a combination of both. More of one means less of the other. Finding the point on the curve for your business is the first challenge. Industry norms, your operating philosophy and the nature of your product or service will dictate the 'sweet spot'. In addition to finding the sweet spot, you have to worry about executing on the promises made to the customer. Its all very well to say you will give a refund, but setting up the logistics of packing the product, shipping, paying for shipping and refunding the money are just some of the processes that need to work flawlessly. For a service, you may be required to deliver it again. Then there are the processes to capture the incidents and costs so analytics can be generated for future planning.

Treat identifying trade offs and their sweet spots followed by setting up operational processes to execute on the promises as one package for getting and keeping happy customers.