After the Love has Gone

Perhaps you’ve heard this story:

A man pursues a woman, wooing her with flowers and trinkets, taking her on dates for romantic dinners and dancing. He tells her he loves her. The woman, knowing a little something about men, accepts his words and gifts cautiously, enjoying the attention, wanting to believe but having been burned before, she holds back on relinquishing the ultimate prize: sex.

This goes on for some time with no lessening of the man’s ardor. Finally, she accepts his affections as genuine and agrees to sleep with him. The two of them have an evening/weekend of glorious sex.

Or bad sex, it really doesn’t matter, because afterwards she never hears from him again. The man goes on his merry way, having gotten at last what he wanted, and the woman, dispirited and tearful, vows to never again let anyone take advantage of her.

Now, it may seem like this is some apocryphal story about relationships but it really isn’t. Because what I’ve just described is the prototypical manner in which most businesses deal with their customers. They woo you. They fuck you. And then they never want to hear from you again. Many of them don’t even have the good manners to kiss you when they’re done. Until, of course, they come up with some other little doodad they want to sell you and the wooing starts all over again.

And we fall for it darn near every time.

Some of you reading this – especially small business owners – may object. We’re very serious about customer service, you say. We love our customers. Where would we be without our customers? And that may very well be true, as far as it goes. There are, no doubt, some companies out there that put a great deal of time and effort into customer service (and not, as George Carlin would say, servicing their customers). Just because I haven’t worked for or dealt with any of them doesn’t mean they don’t exist.

But all companies, good or bad, suffer from the same mindset: once the transaction is done, they don’t treat the customer the same way. Or, in relationship speak, they stop treating the customer like a lover and start treating them like a spouse.

An excellent example of this is provided by Kathy Sierra:

Why do so many companies treat potential users so much better than existing users? Think about it. The brochure is a thing of beauty, while the user manual is a thing of boredom. The brochure gets the big budget while the manual gets the big index. What if we stopped making the docs we give away for free SO much nicer than the ones the user paid for? What if instead of seducing potential users to buy, we seduced existing users to learn?

Have you looked at a user manual lately? Of course you haven’t. Why would you? User manuals, as Kathy points out, are drab, colorless, lifeless tomes printed on (if you’re lucky) recycled paper. Most of them are written in the gobbledy language of technical engineers with an extra helping of coveryourass talk thrown in for good measure. There is a good reason why people hate to read user manuals – and it’s not just stupid men who think they don’t need them. It’s because they aren’t helpful.

Granted, brochures aren’t exactly helpful either, but that’s not the point. Brochures aren’t meant to be helpful. They’re meant to be sexy and alluring, to entice you to give up your money in exchange for the product they depict. The user manual is the booby prize you win for believing the brochure was anything more than a pleasant fiction. Wouldn’t it be nice if the user manual followed through on the promise of the brochure?

Or, to combine Kathy Sierra and George Carlin for a moment, wouldn’t it be nice if the user manual made you feel like you could kick ass instead of feeling like you’d just taken it up the ass?

The user manual, as I mentioned above, is just one example but it’s a telling one. The relationship between consumers and businesses is a lot like a courtship that leads to marriage. Once the romance is gone, the business moves on and all the consumer can do is vow it won’t happen again. And take out the garbage.

Because, you know, somebody has to.