Simon Sinek argues that prosperity and monopoly conditions breed laziness in companies, producing poor customer service because there is no competitive pressure to improve. In harder times, businesses must return to basics and prioritize genuine relationship-building—serving customers with empathy and trust—which creates loyal customers willing to pay a premium. He contrasts short-term manipulative tactics (discounts, promotions, sales pressure) with inspiring service that makes people feel heard and valued, and illustrates this with retail (Nordstrom) and airline customer-service anecdotes.
One of the challenges of good times is it breeds laziness, right? Think about, like, the cable company, like when you have a monopoly. I mean, how much do you really have to give them? It's not like they can go anywhere, right? So the worst customer service, the worst products are usually the ones that have a monopoly position because there's just no. There's no competition. There's no. There's no reason to push or challenge or do better other than just goodwill, I guess.
And so I think when times were good, we get lazy because if you leave, there'll be someone else to take. Give us your business, you know, it'll be fine. I think in hard times, where the stresses are higher because there is less business, I think it forces us to actually go back to the basics of what it means to run a good business. And the best customers are the loyal ones, the ones who will stick with you through thick and thin. And so when you engage in relationship building, when you act in a trustworthy manner, just like I gave the tribal example before, when we as customers get a sense that you would sacrifice your interest to take care of us, we'll give you our love and our loyalty and pay you a premium.
When you go back to Nordstrom's and you have a sweater from Bloomingdale's and you're like, can I return this, please? They'll take it back. And the reason they'll take it back is because it's fine. So they'll lose money on the sweater. But they made you incredibly happy. This is a decision they made. So I think one of the things that it's revealed right now is that we have to bring our a game that we don't get to be lazy anymore. And also relying on manipulation just. It's good for the short term, but not for the long term. So examples of manipulation are things like dropping the price, having a promotion, the pressure. Sell, you know, you know, buy one, get one free. These are all mechanisms to get someone to buy. But they don't do anything to help someone be loyal. They just. They just add. They add the promise of bounty or the threat of punishment. Inspiration. It's different. It's. It's. It's making someone feel heard, make someone feel good. Making somebody feel like they matter. Let me give you an example. So we've all had this experience back in the pre Covid days where you get done with a business trip early and you want to go home early, right? You can go home a day early. So you pick up the phone, you Call the airline and you say, hey, my business should have got done early. I checked online and it seems that you do have a flight available a day before. Can I please get on that flight? And the customer service agent says, I'm sorry, you have the wrong class of ticket. I can't put you on that flight. And you say, please, I just, I just, I don't want to sit in the hotel room. I want to go back to my family. I know you have seats available. Please, please, can you put me on? I'll pay whatever change fees. Please, can you just put me in that flight? I'm exhausted. I'm sorry, sir. I've explained it to you. You have the wrong class of ticket. There's nothing I can do right now. Let's change that to some more empathetic, customer focused, standpoint. Hey, I'm done with my business trip early. Can I go home early? I notice you have seats available. Can I get on that flight? Here's the problem, sir. You've got the run class A ticket. So the computer won't let me do it. Let me see what I could do. I want to get you. I want to get you home. Hold on. Click, click, click, click, click. No, that didn't work. Come on. I'm going to try. We're going to get you home. We're going to get you on that flight. Hold on, sir. Click, click, click, click, click, click, click. No, that didn't work. Hold on, sir. Let me just talk to my, to my supervisor. They may know something. I don't know you hold for a second. They come back. Sir, I am so sorry. I want to get you home to your family. The computer just won't let me do it because of your class of ticket. I am so sorry. You know what? No worries. Don't worry. Thank you so much for looking the same result. And this is the problem, which is we usually judge customer service. Like, if I got what I want, it's good customer service. If I didn't get what I wanted, bad customer service. That's only half the. That's only half the formula. Half the formula is how we make someone feel. And does the customer service agent actually care about the human being on the other side of that phone? And that goes for everything. It's not just customer service. But do we actually care about the person we're trying. We claim to be serving? We call it customer service. Well, the word serve is in there rather than take or selfish or explain or rationalize. I work in customer rationalization. That actually would be more accurate for most customer service departments. And so I think that idea of treating people and seeing people as people.
And trying to. And trying to help people live better lives, I think we're seeing it, and I think that's a very good thing. Not because I think there's some sort of renaissance now. I think it's because we got lazy for a bunch of years and now we're having to go back to basics.
