Customer Service vs. Process Management

Customer service and process management are often at odds with one another: the desire to improve gross margin requires creating a product as cheaply as possible (regardless of quality), whereas the desire to improve customer satisfaction requires creating a product that's as good as possible (regardless of cost). As such, the market offerings of most companies represent a compromise between the two - or at best, a calculated decision about the level of quality-versus-price that a given product represents.

On one end of the spectrum is the company that offers a very low-quality product, so poorly suited to the needs and desires of the consumer that no-one would be willing to buy it if it were even a little bit worse. On the other end of the spectrum is the company that offers a very high-quality product, but one that is very expensive, so much so that no-one would be willing to buy it if it the price were even a little bit higher.

My sense is that neither extreme is the "natural" winner in all instances: a company chooses to produce a product that balances quality against price to provide an offering that is appealing to a given market segment. Some customers are willing to pay a premium price for a high-quality product, whereas others seek to pay the lowest price possible and will accept a product that is barely sufficient.

And at this point, I'm going to stop writing: I suspect that I am merely rehashing a hackneyed argument of price versus quality and have forgotten what it was that entered my mind that brought something new to the conversation. I'll return to it later if it re-occurs to me.