Thursday, May 31, 2018

Dissatisfaction and Psychological Motivation

The greatest and most certain source of customer dissatisfaction is the failure of a product to satisfy the need for which it was purchased – which in turn has many possible causes, the first of which is the misidentification or misunderstanding of need and the criteria by which the need will be fulfilled.  This occurs more often where the product is a good (which the customer lacks the skills to successfully employ, or even to select the right good) but is also quite common in services (when the customer has provided incorrect or insufficient information for the service provider to take the correct action).

The problem begins in the process of selection: the customer is unable to choose the correct product because he does not know what will solve his need – sales can be of some assistance, but because sales tends to focus on “selling” it’s rare to encounter a sales professional whose ethics can overpower his mercenary interest in talking to the customer out of buying the wrong product.   A perfect product, proficiently employed, cannot result in satisfaction if it is the wrong product in the first place.

To back it up another step, to select the right product to serve a need, one must understand the need – if the need is not understood, everything after it (the purchasing and use process) cannot succeed except by accident.

Where needs are practical, satisfaction of need is fairly straightforward because the problem can be objectively diagnosed and the results objectively assessed – the use of the product effected the exact change that was desired.  I would propose that for the great majority of products in the present day. 

But where the needs are psychological, satisfaction of need can be extremely difficult.  Who can say, with certainty, what will cause a desired change in emotional state – to make a person happy, or to mitigate their anger, even when that person is oneself?   And how can person who means to serve another know what their psychological state is and how it can be positively affected?  

It seems a trivial thing, but it likely has a very large financial impact on developed markers.  Given the evolution of customer services, we are as a culture extremely good at diagnosing and correcting functional problems – and I would posit that, with some exceptions, the “kings” have been worked out of most product experiences insofar as their ability to satisfy the customer’s functional need - they at least have the capability to solve the need if selected and employed appropriately, by objective and observable criteria.

Thus considered, it is the emotional criteria that are the most likely cause of the greater proportion of customer satisfaction in the present day.   It is not that the product does not deliver its functional purpose, but that its employment does not address the psychological need for which it was sought, not was the correct product even selected because the need was not sufficiently understood.

Thursday, May 24, 2018

Finance: The Third Level of Consequence

Where economics focuses on financial outcomes, it is functioning at the third level of consequence, ignoring two levels of consequence that precede it.  This may be the reason that the financial approach to economics finds itself so often frustrated, unable to form a reliable model or explain the phenomena that naturally occurs in the market.

The first level of consequence is corporeal: the human being is a mind that is contained with the fragile case of a body.  Therefore, the first consequences of concern at the prospect of any human action is the jeopardy it poses to the integrity of the body and mind of the actor.   Any injury or debilitation in pursuit of a specific goal is a permanent consequence, whose cost must be factored into the greater “budget” of life.  In general, we expect that we will maintain our present state – to emerge from any activity in more or less the same condition in which we entered into it.

Costs to corporeal integrity may be objectively calculated according to the projected value, accounting for the risk of damage and the value that is placed on the type of damage inflicted.   But while it is easy enough for an actuary to put a dollar value on the debilitation of another person, it is not so easy for a person to assess the value of their own debilitation – nor is accepting the actuary’s figures a sign of assent or agreement of value.  

The second level of consequence is social: the human being is a social animal, who benefits from participation in society.   There is no method to reliably quantify the degree to which we value the engagement with others nor the value that can be placed upon our identity and esteem in a social context, but they are nonetheless valued.   And just as we expect participation in an activity to have no effect on the integrity of our bodies, so do we expect participation to have no effect on our social standing.

It is likewise futile to attempt to monetize human relationships.   We may decide to engage in some activity that will harm our esteem by the same vague estimations of potential outcomes: how will our esteem and relationships suffer as a consequence of our involvement, and what is the likelihood of our involvement being observed or detected?   But what is the financial value of damaging a social connection?

It is only on the third level of consequence that we begin to consider anything that can be assessed financially.    On this level, we begin to consider the consequences an effect will have on property: whether we will gain or lose value, or the fundamental nature of property will be changed in an undertaking that decreases or augments its value to us.

Even then, assigning a monetary value to property is a highly subjective matter – even when one attempts to objectivize it, this is generally done by the market value of the property were it offered for sale.  That is to say, the value is considered to be that placed upon it by someone who does not already own it, not the value placed upon it by the owner – which is always greater.   If it were not so, we would choose to possess nothing, the money offered in exchange for it being more valuable to us than its possession – hence to possess anything at all is to value it more than its market price.

Thursday, May 17, 2018

The Meaning(lessness) of Life

A paradox to consider: we speak of time as being a precious commodity, but also as a nuisance.   We find that we have too much time on our hands, but in other instances we feel that we have too little.   Is this merely a an academic meandering, or are there practical implications to this duality in our perception of time as a commodity?

Perhaps the most undesirable time are the scraps of time that are spent waiting for something else to happen: you arrive at the doctor’s office on time for an appointment, but the doctor is running “a few minutes” late, so you are relegated to the waiting room.   Ten minutes pass, then twenty, then half an hour, then longer – and your irritation grows with each passing moment.  Most often, this delay is inconsequential – there is nothing else on your schedule and you had no better use for the time.  It’s simply the sense of being trapped for an interminable amount of time that creates irritation.

But even when the time is know, it is a nuisance.  Let’s say that you don’t arrive on time, but instead fifteen minutes early, and the appointment takes place at the proper time.   What do you do with those fifteen precious moments of your life?   Fiddle with your phone, pick up a magazine and read an article you’re not interested in, or make small-talk with your fellow temporal prisoners?   

Nothing that you do during this time is particularly meaningful or pleasant.   You usually don’t have the equipment to do something worthwhile, there isn’t time to leave and come back, there are few tasks that fifteen minutes is sufficient to complete or even make meaningful progress, and you often cannot give your full attention to something for the risk of missing your turn.

Daily life is riddled with these scraps of time – when you are ready but it is not yet time to go, when you have arrived and it is not yet time to start the activity you came for.  Our “standard” daily routine is arranged to minimize scraps of time, but any activity outside the usual is often accompanied by these “not yet” moments of waiting.   Think about a day when you must travel by airplane and check into a hotel for a meeting the next day – practically the entire day is spent waiting on something to happen.

There is also the time we spend in activities that are not meaningful in themselves, but are done in preparation for more meaningful things.   Take the travel example, the entire day is spend in activities that are not meaningful except as a means to do something else – the meeting that will happen the next day.   Or consider college education, which is four years of activity that is merely in preparation for getting a job in which you will do meaningful things.

And even on the job, are the things you do every day really that meaningful?   They are routine duties, done to earn a paycheck.   Does balancing the ledgers or counting the stock have a meaningful impact on the life of the worker?   Aside of receiving his wage, is there any motivation to do these things, or to do them well?

And even for meaningful work, is it meaningful to the worker?   Let’s say you are the doctor that others come to see, or a surgeon who daily performs life-saving procedures.   Aside of the salary you receive, is this meaningful work?   It is certainly meaningful to the patient – but is it meaningful for you?

It was not my intention here to go on a nihilistic rant, though it seems to be headed in that direction.   All of life is not meaningless, and there are in fact meaningful moments where the things that we do have an impact on our lives in some significant way.   But most of life is spent on those moments in-between – when we are waiting for something to happening, preparing to do something, or doing something that is valuable to someone other than ourselves.

None of these moments in time are meaningful, and as such most of them are entirely undesirable.  We may take some satisfaction in the good we do for others, and we may even take satisfaction in finding some way to pass the time – but the moments in life that are precious to us, those for which we seem to have not enough time, tend to be few.

As a general principle, paradoxes do not exist.   When you seem to have encountered one, you must check your premises.   And the flaw in the premise of the paradoxical value of time is that it is a commodity – that one second is the same as the next.   And in this regard, time is not a commodity: some moments matter, some don’t.  In all, I’m led to the conclusion that most simply don’t.

Thursday, May 10, 2018

The Newness of Personal Finance

In my studies of personal financial management, it has occurred to me that money and wealth are relatively new things.   Human beings have roamed the planet for about 200,000 years, developed agricultural settlements perhaps 10,000 years ago, and have only been handling money and wealth for about 100 years.

In the modern day, 92% of people (in the US, a developed economy) have checking accounts, and 76% of them hold investments (stocks, bonds, etc.) though generally only in their retirement accounts.  So money and investing seems entirely normal, but things were not always thus.

During the early twentieth century, only 8% of the (US) population lived in towns and cities. Even as late as the 1950s, 45% of the population was still rural, living in isolated agricultural communities that, in an economic sense, had not changed much since the advent of agriculture itself.

Granted, “money” has existed for longer than that but it was not part of daily existence for the vast majority of people.   Most people lived on self-sustaining estates, producing and handling the goods they consumed without engaging in trade.   Only the heads of estates and the merchant class routinely engaged in trade that would require the use of money.   

And even when money found its way into the hands of the working classes, it was seldom held for very long.   The worker’s wages were paid to landlord, grocer, clothier, and other vendors – sometimes the same day they were received, but seldom longer than a week.  Few people amassed wealth, and living hand-to-mouth was considered entirely normal.

Therefore it has only been since the 1950s that people have worked in professions in which they are paid in money, and had sufficient income to have money “left over” at the end of the monthly consumption cycle.   It was only since the 1980s, with the creation of personal retirement accounts (IRA and 401k) that most people became involved in investing, or even considered the necessity of saving money to pay for their own retirement.

So it is little wonder that people are so woefully unskilled at managing money and investments – it is something that is very new to most people, and not something that they can learn from their elders (even their grandparents lived in the hand-to-mouth age).  Given that the academic world is disdainful of financial topics and discussion money is considered a social taboo, there are few venues through which a person can learn to manage their money and investments.   

We are, for the most part, ignorant primitives doing our best to handle some new and unfamiliar technology without any instructions or guidance, and no established authorities that are willing or qualified to guide us.

Thursday, May 3, 2018

Drawing the Line

In the context of professional relationships, there are clearly defined boundaries for interaction – lines that it is socially inappropriate to cross, given the context of the relationship.   In general, these boundaries are drawn by functional necessity: if any interaction is not functionally necessary to success are the professional encounter, then it is inappropriate to the professional relationship.

This may be considered a function of economics: the time and effort that a person must spend in a professional encounter represents a cost that is laid out for whatever benefit is derived from the contact.   On the business side, we seek to minimize the amount of time employees spend serving customers in order to maximize the efficiency of the funds spent on wages.

This is also considered from the customer side as well, though the “hassle” of service is seldom monetized, people do consider the amount of time they must invest in a purchasing or service encounter.   It is not that they desire quickness, but they abhor wastefulness of their time.   

Hence it is desirable to both sides for the professional encounter to be as brief as possible.

Of course, this is a rather inhuman method of measuring the value of an interaction.  While those on the business side would be entirely satisfied by a minimal and sterile encounter between their front-line employees and the market, the “market” is composed of human beings, social creatures whose functional needs may be met by an encounter with an automaton, but whose social proclivities require something more than the bare necessities of a functional encounter.

The question is: where to draw the line?

On one extreme, an encounter with a sterile and officious service provider is unpleasant – and while such an encounter is very respectful of the customers’ time, it is an affront to their humanity.   On the other extreme, an encounter with a service provider who is overly social becomes equally loathsome – friendliness is pleasant, but if it is overdone, it can become overbearing and customers expect a certain professional distance from those who serve them.

One factor is likely the duration of the service: when making a retail purchase, it would be very awkward for the checkout clerk to engage customers in extended conversation.   But when getting a haircut, it would be equally awkward for the barber or stylist not to engage in conversation with the customer.

Another factor would be whether the service is recursive.  One generally does not expect a waiter to be overly friendly, but a customer who has lunch in the very same restaurant every workday and sees the same waiter five times a week will accept and perhaps expect a greater degree of social interaction with the service provider.

Another factor might be the nature of the product.  To provide assistance, a service provider must have a better sense of the context in which a product is used: a clerk at a grocery store might ask what meal is being prepared and how many are being served, one at a clothing store might ask about the occasion for which an outfit is being purchased, one at a hardware store might ask about the home and lifestyle of the client.   Arguably, these are functionally necessary questions for the service, but there is often a but of non-functional conversation that arises in due course.

Another factor is the level of service required or desired of the service provider.   In the previous example, a customer might welcome a higher level of service from the grocery clerk, who might presume to offer advice about the meal that the customer is preparing.   In other instances, the customer does not welcome such advice – he knows what he wants and just needs help finding an item.

Another factor is the degree to which the product relates to the esteem (social or self) of the purchaser or owner.   It can be generally observed that service at high-end stores is more “personal” than service at low-end stores.   Hence buying an expensive pair of shoes at a boutique is a far more social encounter than buying a cheap pair at a discount retailer.

At this point, I’m getting the sense I may have scratched the surface of a topic that goes much deeper than a blog post will accommodate – and likely there’s need for study in the domain of social psychology.