Service Beats Low Prices
Customer service is more important than low prices when it comes to luring and keeping loyal customers, according to a new survey by Accenture.
More than two thirds of over 4,000 consumers surveyed worldwide said they’ve switched businesses as the result of a poor customer service experience, the New York-based management consulting firm reported this week. By contrast, just over half said lower prices lured them elsewhere.
The difference was even more dramatic among American consumers, with nearly 75 percent saying they’ve switched service providers due to poor service, compared to 47 percent who were drawn by lower prices.
The survey also found that customer loyalty continues to erode as consumer expectations rise.
Most respondents said they demand more from businesses than they did a year ago, and many said they will demand even more in the years ahead. Twenty percent of respondents said they would immediately leave a business as the result of poor service, up seven percent from a similar survey last year, the firm reported.
Photo by thadz.
Family Carves Out Niche In Dried Pumpkin Seeds
They look like pumpkins in the field, and the end product is marketed as “pumpkin seeds,” but technically they are squash and squash seeds.
Despite the elastic terminology, Autumn Seed Inc. has firmed up its grasp on the market in the past 60 years. Howard Ropp’s father started the business back in 1943, producing 100,000 pounds of seeds. Now Howard and his son Greg oversee a company putting out 2.5 million pounds in a good year.
“We’re the only ones in the U.S. doing this,” Greg Ropp said. “Our only competitor is China. And they can’t match us for quality.”
“We build our own harvesters, which handle up to 60,000 pounds a day,” Howard Ropp said. “We’ve got nine of them, and run six at a time, but we don’t sell them.”
“The Chinese would love to have these machines,” Greg Ropp added.
“Our harvest runs from September through about the second week of November,” he said. “We’ve got about 15 full-time workers right now, and four full-time year-round - two full-time fabricators and two in the warehouse. A lot of retired guys come work for us during harvest, driving and whatnot.”
The dried squash seeds are shipped to several roasters, “David and Sons being one you’d recognize,” Greg Ropp said. Once the seeds are roasted and ready for market, then they can be called pumpkin seeds, he said.
Photo by ecstaticist.
Get Ready For Internet Sales Taxes In 2009
Attention, online shoppers! This may be the last holiday season you can dodge sales taxes by buying presents on the Web. State legislators, retailers and lawyers say 2009 may be the year Internet taxes finally come to pass.
The idea, which would levy sales tax on most goods bought online, has been tossed around for nearly a decade. A perfect storm of factors, including record state budget deficits, a new Congress and continued e-commerce growth, appear likely to rekindle the issue. Experts say that cash-strapped states view this revenue, estimated to be several billions of dollars, as money left on the table.
“States are coming up with huge deficits and looking for places to make money,” says Eric Menhart, the principal of CyberLaw, a Rockville, Md.-based law firm that concentrates on technology legal issues. “All of a sudden, Internet taxation appears a lot more viable.”
Spotting an opportunity, legislators and other proponents of Internet taxation are renewing their efforts. Scott Peterson, executive director of the Streamlined Sales Tax Governing Board, a group that oversees states’ efforts to simplify and modernize sales tax issues, says legislators from Florida, Illinois, Massachusetts, Texas and Virginia, among others, have recently contacted him about the issue.
The plan: to reintroduce legislation as early as January when the new Congress takes office. The legislative route is necessary because the Supreme Court ruled in the 1990s that states can’t require out-of-state retailers to collect sales tax on online sales. Proponents believe that making their case to Congress would be faster and more practical than wending their way through the courts.
Photo by enimal.