Care far more, or far less

A man in Sharjah has a refund stuck with a large electronics retailer. The chat window is friendly. It thanks him for his patience, offers four options, none of which is his problem, and returns him politely to the beginning.

There is no phone number. There used to be.

It is not that the company stopped caring. It probably never cared in any way a person would recognise. It simply grew to a size where somebody could do the arithmetic, and the arithmetic said that a human answering his question costs more than the customers lost by not answering it. The loop did not end the concern. It revealed there had been none to end.

For anybody competing with a business like that, the middle is the weak position. Trying to look nearly as attentive at nearly the same cost is a game the larger player wins every time.

There are two other ways to play.

One is to care far less, and say so. Cheaper, simpler, no promise of help, and honest that there is none. People take that deal every day without anger, because nobody pretended otherwise.

The other is to care far more than seems reasonable. The small shop near his flat that picks up on the second ring, knows his name by the third call, and sorts out the refund before he has finished explaining. That costs money. It also earns the kind of customer who tells everyone he meets.

Both of those can earn their keep. Pretending to care, from somewhere in the middle, is the one that cannot.