Category: Customers and customer service

  • Dealing with the rigid rule enforcer: The case of the miniscule backpack

    Last weekend, I showed up at a professional football game wearing a tiny hiking backpack—I mean, a pack small enough to scale Mt. Everest without breaking much of a sweat. But of course, the friendly gate agent informed me that this particular bag was “too big to go into the stadium.” “Is there a locker…

  • Screw-ups as discounts

    Products that perform poorly. Services that fall short. For most of us, these are nothing more than tremendous frustrations. Fewer of us realize that they also represent tremendous opportunities—opportunities to make life negotiable by requesting a discount! Some people don’t know that companies offer discounts to dissatisfied customers. Others know but are too afraid to…

  • If you want it, just ask!

    One of the simplest and yet most complicated principles of negotiation success is this: If you want something, you have to ask for it! It’s one of the simplest principles because it sounds pretty obvious. It’s one of the most complicated because few people actually do it. Put differently, most of us—myself included—want important things…