The Unintended Effects of Short Term Planning On Your Customers

Posted by admin

July 25, 2008

Bob Hettel - of SearchlightSolutions shares some thought on the impact of short term planning on your customer’s long term satisfaction.

Short term planning almost always has long term implications. Take the cuts that many companies are currently making. Companies are looking to cut staff and improve the bottom line. Many of these cuts are being made in so called “administrative” positions. While this may look good to a company’s bottom line today what impact will this have on your customers? What impact will it have on the remaining staff? Often this impact will take months to become evident. It can show up in decreased morale, increased turnover and ultimately in decreased business.

Take Circuit City as an example, in order to cut costs they decided to let go 3,400 of their highest paid staff. This looked great on paper – these people were doing the same job as their lower paid counterparts. In reality they let go some of their most experience and best trained staff. As a result, customers did not receive the service they need. Customers began defecting to the competition who had better trained staff who could better serve their customers needs. As a result sales dropped and the financial picture got worse, not better, not to mention the PR nightmare this created.

As Circuit City has shown, the long term implications of short term planning can dramatically affect your business in many ways but none is more critical then how your customers are affected.

Marketing