The July 12, 2004 column from Bob Lewis talks about making business decisions (The column will disappear behind his lead curtain at the end of the week. You have to give his company permission to spam you to retrieve it later.).
Specifically, do you compete on features or price. Smart companies realize they have to chose one or the other, not both. I am reminded of my time at the local bank while working on my Masters. The bank had a rule that all customer calls had to be answered by a person, not a phone mail system. Thus, it seems, the choice was to compete on features. But, unfortunately, the bank also cut the number of people available to answers these calls by, if I remember right, more than half.
Imagine, if you will, working at this bank. Your management tells you they value what you do. They also say they value their customers. But what management does is drastically cut the staff available to answer calls from these customers. What message is management sending to staff and how much trust do you think employees have in what management tells them?
Now, imagine you are a customer of this bank. You need to talk to someone about your bank statement (which seems to be off by a couple of thousand dollars, perhaps because the bank outsourced some of their back room offices). So you call and hear either a busy signal or the sound of the phone ringing. And ringing. And ringing. What message has management sent to this customer and how much trust and loyalty will this customer have?
Even smarter companies realize they have to be consistent in their choices. That is, they can't say they will make their decision on a case by case basis so that sometimes they choose features and sometimes price. If your business is to prosper, you have to choose one or the other and then consistency apply that choice to all situations. Choose unwisely and your business eventually may go under. Don't choose at all (or choose both) and your business will definitely go under (or be bought by someone else).
So, as in many things, it's about the choices you make. Choose wisely.
