For them or on them

Somewhere in every business, usually without anyone announcing it, a choice gets made. Is the next clever idea going to help the people who buy from us, or is it going to get a little more out of them?

A small online fitness studio in Doha offers a free trial. Signing up takes ten seconds. Cancelling takes a phone call during office hours, a form, and a final screen asking whether you are sure you want to give up on your health. Plenty of people stay subscribed for months they never use. The revenue looks lovely.

None of that is illegal, and all of it is a decision. The same skill that built the maze could have built something else: a reminder two days before the trial ends, a pause for the month someone travels, a cancellation that takes one tap and ends with a thank you.

This is not an argument for being cheap. People happily pay a lot for something that returns more than it cost them. It is an argument about where the ingenuity goes. The design, the software, the wording, the small nudges on a screen can all be aimed at making the customer's life better, or at making the exit harder to find.

From outside, the two look alike for a while. Both make money this year.

The difference shows up slowly. A business that points its cleverness at its customers' benefit builds something they would miss if it closed. A business that points it at their wallets builds a list of people waiting for a reason to leave.

And the habit sets. A company that spends long enough learning to squeeze loses the knack of serving, and by the time it needs it back, nobody inside remembers how it was done.