seth on waiting in line

I'm like Seth Godin super fanboy number one or something. Everything he says makes sense, and he says stuff publicly (that I've been saying privately for years) about taking care of your customers, viral (or permission-based) marketing, and just treating consumers like they matter.

In an age where we keep finding ourselve up against monolithic multi-national who could give a flying fuck about our business as they destroy smaller companies who actually do care, Seth's ideas and advice are perfect for smaller companies: treat your customers with respect, understand that the cost of switching anything is so low now you have to seriously earn your customer's time and attention, and find unique (and possibly risky) ways to handle them once they're in the door.

Earlier this week, Seth wrote about all the lines he saw at the airport in Las Vegas, and all the people who were waiting in them:

The airport in Las Vegas is at maximum capacity. It's jammed. There is a line for everything, even the men's room.

What amazed me, though, was the line ten or twelve deep at the food concessions. People were waiting ten minutes or longer to buy a bottle of water for $2.59 or a yogurt for a few dollars.

All day, every day. A line.

On the way home from the airport I called an organization that sells $500 training programs to businesses. Even though I was trying to reach someone that worked there, I was calling in on the orders line (the only number I had). I waited 15 minutes to talk to a real person.

Think about that.

In both cases, this is the last step of a very expensive chain. It's expensive to rent that space in the airport. Expensive to outfit it. Expensive to bring in all the supplies. It's expensive to build a training business, expensive to have the outbound marketing, the brochures, the events worth talking about.

The last step, though, that's cheap. The last step, the step where someone actually takes your money--it's not just cheap, it's nothing but incremental profit.

So what should companies do about waiting in line? Here's Seth's conclusion: Seth's Blog: Waiting in line

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