Let's wrap up this week's theme on customer happiness with some discussion on creating a culture that is intent on delivering it. It's not overly complicated, but making the decision can be.

I'll jump right in and tell you why a fanatical customer happiness culture is hard. Math. That's right. Math gets in the way.

More specifically, it's about how business owners and top leaders view money.

This week I had two different encounters that robbed me of about 4 hours total. Companies that open their doors daily without any regard to customer happiness. Every day it happens. They start another day running uphill in the battle for customer satisfaction. Forget happiness. They're not yet on square one toward satisfaction. Happiness is many solar systems away.

After running into a brick wall on a technical issue that I attempted to solve myself (something I usually am able to do rather quickly), I contact support. I'm quickly informed that what I want to do isn't possible. Hum. Okay. I don't think that's right so I push back ever so slightly. Nope. Not possible.

On a lark I bail out then contact support again, this time getting a different person. I don't know. Let me check, she says. Okay.

Nothing. She goes dark and never returns. Perhaps the Bermuda Triangle Of Sucky Customer Service snagged her.

This goes on for a bit while I'm Googling like a fiend. Somewhere along the way, I find a page produced by this same company. That's right. It was on their website. Addressing my issue and confirming that my technical issue could be solved. Four support people had no knowledge of the issue or their own company's website content about it. I was brand new to them (fooling with them on behalf of a friend) and I found it. But I was the customer (kinda sorta) so I had a much bigger interest in solving my problem.

And there it was. The problem staring at me once again. The same problem with pathetic customer service we all experience. Leadership sucks. Top level leaders, including their CEO and founder do not have a customer happiness focus. If they did, my experience would have been vastly different.

Here's why it's a math problem. A money problem.

Making customers happy costs money. Sometimes lots of money. That means reduced profits. It means lower sales. Or...does it?

Some leaders aren't good with customer happiness math. Instead they practice the hard math school taught them. Or numbers the VC community knows by heart. But math is alive in the real world and behind the math are human beings. When you're trying to create the next startup unicorn (a company that hits the billion dollar mark), you don't always focus on Randy, the customer. It just doesn't seem to scale. Or...does it?

Last year Skybell Video Doorbell founder Andrew Thomas wrote an article at Inc. entitled, "The Secret Ratio That Proves Why Customer Reviews Are So Important."
Here's the ratio: It takes roughly 40 positive customer experiences to undo the damage of a single negative review.
Mr. Thomas writes:

A customer who has a negative experience is highly likely to share that experience by leaving a bad review. A customer who has a positive experience, on the other hand, is unlikely to leave a good review.

The bar is high, but every CEO and business owner must clear it IF they want to build a company with a reputation for customer happiness. That's the rub. Many, perhaps most, don't. They'd rather pursue a financially successful company and they lack the vision to see and understand that those goals aren't contradictory.
A culture intent on delivering customer happiness understands the seemingly hidden math that works in favor of companies w...