Pay your customers to outdo the competition

The recent buzz in the tech arena is on how Ved Sanmay, an ex-googler, bought Google for $12 only. The purchase came through and he owned the domain for a minute, within which he flagged the flaws to the Google’s security team and carted away a generous sum in bug bounty. Oh, he did not actually cart the bounty away, but donated it in a more generous offering, augmented by Google, to charity. 

The question is, why should Google pay Ved for uncovering a nippy slip?  

Another case is the epic ‘Error free banking’ tagged ‘We pay’ by Dr. Aderotimi Adelola of the defunct Owena Bank (later Omega Bank). The maxim was, ‘If we didn’t serve you within the next 5 minutes of your entering our banking hall, we pay you NGN 500’ – this was a generous sum at the time. The move put the staff on their toes, made the customers happier, repositioned the bank for financial prosperity, and has now become a case study for Customer Service training in Lagos Business School. 

To cut cost, googlers have worked, ever redoubling precision, to keep bug bounties claim at minimum and it can also be argued that Google’s statutory bug bounty will encourage hackers to rather report flaws in order to claim bounties, than exploit it in other malicious ways. Anyway, this may not apply to Ved, or some psychotic hackers, who does not do this for the money. However, it sends a positive message that says, ‘We will go to any length to serve you,’ to customers. 

The best of customer service is indeed customer-centric, putting customers at the centre of decision making.  It should also push you to continually outdo yourself. After all, outdoing the competition only takes you ahead, but outdoing yourself keeps you ahead.

 

What are your thoughts on paying customers? Discuss with us now on our tweet-chat activity on Twitter with the hashtag #TweetChatExcellaid.

http://www.excellaid.com.ng/blog/pay-your-customers-to-outdo-the-competition