The company I used to work for was having some serious issues about declining business. They had tried all of the typical industry standard methods of increasing business to no avail. So the embarkd on a huge market research project polling customers, studying data about brand loyalty, customer satisfaction and dissatisfaction etc, compiled all of this data and brought it back to the stores and began implementing a strategy of getting everyone focused on customer service and customer perception. One of the key factors was acknowledging that the single most damaging thing to business was customer dissatisfaction, especially in the form of the customer who just quietly leaves and never comes back. The customer who is going to be irrate and storm up to customer service is going to get resolution to their issue, but the one who just gets pissed, and walks away and finds other things to spend their collecting dollars on will eventually kill a company. We all know SSC pays attention to these forums and after all it's free market research for them, so it pays for them to hear the negative comments. If they have the information about what people are unhappy with, then they can make a decision about if its fiscally possible to address it or not. The forums are great sounding boards and they can make people speak up who might otherwise remain silent. The idea of telling people to state their complaint once and then shut up about it, so as to not bring everyone down, is the most detrimental thing you could do to SSC. There is a phrase in business that the squeeky wheel gets the grease, and the more vocal people are about an issue, the more seriously it will be taken.
We all form an identity on message boards like this and our posts generally reflect consistancy. If you constantly post SSC sucks comments or SSC can do no wrong comments people will dismiss you as incapable of voicing an objective opinion. When you look back at the fight between Irish and Josh, Irish accused SSC of price gouging, Josh called him on it and said he had no proof of that. On the other hand Josh has made statements about the price hikes must have other costs and not just greed. So both guys are guilty of the same thing, making an assumption based on their point of view with no real evidence. Irish sees the cost of plastics as being the largest factor in the production costs, but unless we had a total breakdown of the costs incurred we can't know for sure. The same is true for Josh. His "other costs" hold no merit unless we have a breakdown of costs to determine if the extra cash is actually going toward profit or production. SSC is certainly not going to disclose this information so we are left with the information we have and we need to form our opinions according to them. SSC are the ones who need to pay attention those formed opinions because that is what will erode their customer base.
If you're going to post a complaint or praise it should be backed up with something tangible. If you see something wrong, be specific, whether its mascara on Leia or Luke's nose or Mauls eye or even as general as 'I can't place it but it seems off' don't just say "It sucks and is a ripoff' and if its praise say what makes it so great. If you think something is overpriced, use facts to make your case, compare it to similar items, if you feel something is a great deal, use facts to state why. When its compared to a similar item point out what makes it more difficult to produce than another item. I think we should play to our strengths and the areas where our knowledge in certain areas will shed light on things.
If these forums became nothing more than a SSC lovefest then the company would lose a valuable resource in what is good and what can be improved in their business. As members, we need to be aware that the things we post determine whether our opinions are considered or dismissed.
