Customer Alienation: The Downside of Making Changes the Wrong Way

Last week I was traveling for work and sat at the bar of the nice restaurant below my hotel. Burnt out from a day of driving, and on a Monday no less, I was looking forward to a good, quiet meal alone.

After a few moments of being seated, the bartender came over and asked what I wanted to drink. “Do you have a wine or beer list?” I asked.

“Oh sure, no problem, just hold your phone up to the code and scan it,” she said cheerfully, pointing to a tiny placard held in place by a metal rod about three seats over from me.

Knowing the drill by now, I got up and grabbed the tiny square, scanned my phone and began staring at the selections in 8-point font aglow on my screen. I drank my drink and when the time came to order food, I pulled out my phone again and read the items off my phone—a process that, at this point, I’ve repeated dozens of times since these QR menus made their debut during the onset of the pandemic.

And I got to wondering, WHO asked for this? I certainly didn’t.

And look, let’s lay out the usual disclaimers here: this is not a REAL problem in the sense that I am extremely fortunate and to be able to eat occasionally at nice places and travel for work. I do consider it a privilege. That is not lost on me, nor is the fact that I understand why these menus were instituted to begin with during Covid-19, when so much emphasis was (largely in misguided fashion) placed on contactless service and going “touchless”. I get all of that.

I also understand that there are sustainability and cost factors here that may play into the decisions that restaurants make away from a printed menu, and certain concepts may be more appropriate than others for a QR code menu. I don’t begrudge any individual operator currently using such technology as they see fit.

But on the whole, as an industry, is this something that consumers now prefer? Almost certainly not. Dining out is an escape, it’s a place where good food, drink and conversation still mean something. Posting pictures of your order on social media means that phones have already infiltrated the restaurant arena, but do we truly want the actual MECHANICS of the dining experience to rely on them? I don’t have any empirical data here, but I can say that scanning a menu on my phone wasn’t something that I heard diners clamoring for in 2019. At most, it’s been a solution in search of a problem-like so much technology. It does something, but doesn’t really improve anything.

To be clear, I’m only picking on QR menus here-at most a slight annoyance for me and something you personally may prefer-as a metaphor to ask a philosophical question: what does a business owe its customers during a transaction? More specifically, what obligation do businesses have to give their customers what best suits them, rather than what best suits the businesses?

You can look at everything from airlines to the New Coke as examples of companies being tone-deaf to consumer demand. The linen and uniform industry-of which I’m a part of-is one of the primary traffickers of such malfeasance, which is perhaps why it hits so close to home. It’s easy to lose sight of what your customers want when you’re sitting in a conference room above the day-to-day.

Often, entire industries will change their way of doing things, unveil new products, and generally overhaul the totality of customer experiences based on little more than a spreadsheet or the whims of leadership or any number of factors BUT customer demand, short-term profit being the highest priority.

But this type of thinking can cause long-term issues. The heart of which is a term I call “customer alienation”. Customer alienation occurs when subtle (or not) changes to the way a business conducts itself manifest into service or policies that make the customer experience less enjoyable.

This can and does occur in any number of ways: product offering, invoicing (including, although not exclusively, price), customer service, and many other SOPs fall under the customer alienation banner.

The net result can be as minor as diminished customer satisfaction marks and as major as lost customers and revenue. Slight operational changes can result in existential problems. But they don’t have to.

The linen and uniform industry is infamous for such actions. Historically, we’ve been terrible about actually doing what our customers ask, and as such we suffer from some of the worst customer satisfaction and retention that I’m aware of. Changes to billing, service, and contracts have plagued us to the point where customers merely tolerate us. It’s a shame.

Because our industry is one of nickels and dimes, and also filled with so many “lifers”, it’s susceptible to the kind of tunnel vision and herd mentality that is conducive to exploiting a captive customer base. As such, lack of retention is treated like a foregone conclusion or the cost of doing business. Largely it’s preventable, because no one ever asked the customer what THEY thought (or worse, cared).?

This isn’t to say that businesses can’t and shouldn’t evolve, or that changes to SOPs and operations need to factor in customer response as the only metric. None of that is the case, but blindly making wholesale changes without regard to what your customers truly WANT is needlessly risky.

So what can be done to prevent customer alienation? The good news is that it’s simple to be proactive. Here are a few tips:

1.??????Ask your customers: If you’re thinking of implementing something new, ask them if it’s something they want or need. A survey is best, and perhaps incentivize them for participation—this isn’t academic research, it’s simply a way to get a finger on the pulse. If you don’t have the resources for a survey, simply contact a few of your best, biggest, and most loyal customer advocates what they think. They’ll shoot you straight and you may save yourself from a lot of headaches.

2.??????Run a pilot program: Before you drastically change something for your entire customer base, find a few willing subjects and have them try it first. Being proactive can prevent a complete disaster from occurring, or at the very least diagnose a issues that hadn’t been discovered yet.

3.??????Don’t fix things that aren’t broken: Sometimes things are going so well that we feel like we need to do SOMETHING to justify our jobs, when in truth we may just be creating needless work for ourselves and our staff. Hit the brakes and truly ask why you want to make the changes you feel you need to in the moment and what the opportunities and threats will arise from such changes.

4.??????Don’t fall in love: Sometimes, especially lately, businesses are having to pivot and make changes in a temporary fashion for a variety of reasons that customers may be willing to tolerate on a short-term basis…this likely explains the QR code menus. The problem occurs when the customer is not willing to make these short-term changes permanent, and the business is caught off-guard by such displeasure. Don’t be surprised if people are willing to change…up to a point. Knowing when that point has been reached is the key, and it’s only remedied by taking complaints seriously.

Customer alienation is real, and it’s a common trap for companies to fall into. Finding the balance between the realities and needs of a business with what the customers want is not easy to achieve. But the most successful companies out there are in tune with it, and everyone else should strive to do better.

Now that this is all wrapped up, I’m going to go find a restaurant with a printed menu and grab a bite to eat.?