A Return to Responsible Business

I was listening to a local talk radio guy yesterday and he was talking about growing up in an America far different with the one we are living in today. It was a time when you could buy a brand new car off the showroom floor around $2,000 or so and the gas to make it run was only about .25/gallon. The average cost to heat/cool and light homes in that era was about $40/month.

As I listened to his remembrances of those days, I smiled because those were the days of my upbringing as well.

But, as I continued to think about those days, I thought to myself (alright it was out loud), what else was it that made those times so good? In the area of business the thing that stands out in my memory was that local business owners were responsive and responsible to their customers. It was a simpler time before answering machines and “press one for service, two for sales, three to be hung up on ….”

If you called during business hours you could talk to the owner, or at least the manager of most businesses. If you had a complaint about a product or the service you received, you took it to the boss. Nearly every business owner knew that it was a privilege to have their customers and that keeping them was more important than trying to find new ones.

Today, things have changed. Not so much for the better I think. We live in a new era of greed, a new era of less than successful customer service, a new era of customer disloyalty.

In my view its time for a return. A return to simpler times and better care taken. Businesses owners whose concern is people will get my business and I will be responsible to my client base. We may not get new cars priced at $2,000, gas at .25/gallon, or home utility bills back down to $40/month, but I believe responsible businesses and their owners can bring us back to a more responsive time.

What do you think? What changes need to be made to make this happen?