Cheap labor isn’t always a bargain

One of the strangest things about many businesses is that your lowest paid employees are the ones who come in direct contact with the single most important element: the customer.

It mystifies me why so many folks have invested money in starting businesses, only to have them run into the ground by dull witted clerks who perceive the customer as Public Enemy number One. And, for the clerk, why shouldn’t the customer be an enemy? A customer at hand means time away from spacing out, making phone calls to friends, or–a real favorite–chewing gum with bovine grace.

For all the laments about so many businesses going under here, we have to admit that some of them really deserved to fall into the tank. Shoppers–be they tourists or locals–aren’t going to be held hostage by uninspired counter clerks for very long. They will adjust their consumption patterns and take their money to more accommodating places.

The critical element in the whole gig is that slippery word, management. Clerks, like everyone else, require competent supervision. Of course, competent supervision costs more money than incompetent supervision, and it’s not an investment that everyone is willing to make. I suspect that in many cases, there’s no supervision at all in many of our restaurants and stores: you’ve got the owner, and you’ve got a squad of minimum wage workers, but nobody in between to keep things running on an even keel.

Which explains the success of the chain store approach, since it comes with built in management systems and formulas for customer service. Many is the time I’ve popped into McDonald’s for lunch not because I really wanted a Big Mac, but because I can rely on them to give me my chow quickly so I can keep on schedule. A lot of places that should meet that standard can’t meet that standard.

Other retail establishments have followed in the fast food footsteps. Retailer Wal Mart is the most famous case. Nobody claims that Wal Mart sells the best possible goods under the sun, but shopping there for basic stuff is as painless (and inexpensive) as possible. An intelligently structured hierarchy of management runs from the clerks all the way up the chief poobah, and the customer is acknowledged as the most important element in the business, and one that is kept clearly in focus.

And now enter the dot.com world. Outfits like Amazon.com have taken the retail interface to an entirely new level, where buying something is merely a matter of clicking a mouse button. Talk about convenience.

Amazon.com, like Wal Mart, like McDonald’s, understands that there’s a lot more to business than merely keeping an inventory and waiting for people to purchase it from you. Be it electronic or human, the quality of the interface between the customer and the establishment will make or break a business. Customers that get lousy service don’t complain, they just quietly go elsewhere. They are the ultimate invisible hand, and they’ve got a lot of choices.