Over the past few years a new age has been brewing, a time where customers are using the competitiveness within the service industries to be compensated. Services used on the day to day by people around the world from health care, credit cards, realtor commissions to cell phone and home services are being negotiated and incentivized as ways to gain customer retention. Customers are calling in with the assistance of paid negotiators, online articles and even youtube videos on how to negotiate rates or compensation for their loyalty. With companies in these industries already competing to bring in new customers with incentives such as free subscriptions, the latest tech, discounts, and financial compensation, we are beginning to identify the customer employee.
The customer employee is typically the ones that call their service providers with the sole intent of receiving some form of financial gain. People tend to use their tenure, competitor rates, offers, threats to leave and often loyalty as negotiation bargaining chips to earn their way. In the standard days of business and its textbook definition transactions were carried out in a contractual service for pay order, however, with the ever-growing business industry’s drive to stay one step ahead of the competition, businesses are beginning to lose out on millions as customers start to come out on top. In 2010 the release of the Patient Protection and affordable care act provided consumers an additional source of health coverage at a lower cost that has turned into a bargaining chip shortly in 2012. For cell phone corporations such as Verizon Wireless, the customer employee began to appear around 2016 when the notable commercial icon of 9 years, Paul Maracelli took a nothing less than a clever marketing deal with Sprint. With cell phone providers already terminating service contracts, this equipped customers with fuel for negotiation.
Real estate agents have been negotiating rates on their commission; Credit Card companies have been driven to negotiate or in cases waive annual fees, interest rates, and late fees by customer demand to retain tenure. Throughout the past few years, I’ve even witnessed people attempting to receive fiscal recognition from auto insurance agencies to no luck due to legal requirements. With being in the business development industry and servicing business in customer service for over the past 10 years I’ve encountered some interesting customer employees, one I recall particularly in a conversation about a company I represented I was asked if we were offering free televisions with our services. Baffled by the request being that I was not in any tv associate market, I replied “no” and inquired as to if the gentleman was looking to get information about the services offered when I was cut short with his response as to why would he want to do business with us otherwise.
Some may consider the customer employee to be a simple customer looking to get reparations without the nature of any wrongdoings, or a simple sense of appreciation for being with the company as long while other companies try to attract them, so how is this different from loyal recognition. Most companies already have recognition programs take, for example, AT&T thanks, Verizon up where customers are rewarded weekly or even monthly, but yet they’re in search of more, a waiver of a late fee, annual fee, service costs or more. Within years the customer employee has been growing in a sense of entitlement and yet shrinking in a sense of accountability, where does this lead? I’m interested to see.
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