Diki-Nomics revisited

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Last Friday night a very large section of a tree in our backyard went down in a storm. The tree hit a power pole that ripped all the services - electricity, phone, cable, broadband - off the house.

For the past five days we've been in the process of getting services restored experiencing first hand all kinds of great examples of diki-nomics in action.

The very large phone services company has made it impossible to find an 800 number on their web site. They've made it drop-dead easy to find the things buy. But when it comes to anything to do with support, it's self-diagnosing and trouble-shooting.

The cable company saw our support call as an opportunity to up sell us on other services before coordinating the repair.

What's the difference between diki-nomics and plain old rotten customer service? Diki-nomics are systemic. The policies in place are intended to thwart customers who might incur some cost.

Don't get me wrong, everyone (but the grouch at the village) has been really friendly. So these companies understand customer service reps need to be polite but what their doing is placing a higher priority on acquiring new customers at the cost of the existing ones.

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Imposing Limits is the blog of Idea Momentum, a Chicago-based product design consultancy. Most of the time we'll be talking about product design process. Occasionally, we'll provide some words of advice, as well as insights and opinions about the business of innovation.

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