The Musings Of An Opinionated Sod [Help Me Grow!]

But of all the things I’ve seen or been exposed to, one act stands above all: when they try to gaslight their customers into believing the removal of a product and/or service, is a demonstration of how much they value and care about their customers.

We’ve seen it with ANZ Bank … when they tried to say reducing bank account interest to basically nothing, was their way of aiding financial responsibility.

We’ve seen it with NIKE … when they claimed the best way to serve their customers was to stop customers being able to order NIKE products from overseas and closing down their app.

And now this …

Yep … Microsoft are saying that to prove they’re always IMPROVING their Microsoft 365 service – a service millions pay a monthly subscription for – they are going to remove a feature that many people use.

That’s right, contrary to popular interpretation, they have decided improvement means deletion, which begs the question – whose ‘improvement’ are they talking about? Something tells me it’s their bank account.

OK, so they say that many – but not all – of the features are available in other products that you get as part of your subscription, but this is just bullshit.

They don’t tell people what those products are.
They don’t tell people how to use them in a way that will give them what they were using Microsoft Publisher for.
They don’t even fucking help you transfer all your existing Microsoft Publisher documents and files into something you can use – or turn to – later.

Nope … all they do is say, “we’re going to stop putting money into this product, you better save them as pdf’s or you’ll lose them and – while we’re at it – you better learn how to educate yourself and adapt your products so they fit with what we’ve decided you need, even though we never asked you and keep charging you an increased subscription fee.

Surely they know this is the opposite of good service?
Surely they realise this is not ‘improving’ their product?
Surely they understand customers can see through this bullshit?

In some ways I hope they don’t, because while it would mean they’re thick-as-shit, it would also mean they’re at least not trying to gaslight us.

But I am afraid it might be both …

Because Microsoft’s ability to fuck themselves – and their customers – thanks to terrible decisions is legendary.

Windows Phones.
Bing Search.
The killing of Office.
The shit that is Teams.
Skype.
Nokia.
Co-Pilot.
And basically 99% of the UI of 99% of their products.

This is a company that wants us to believe their vision of AI is one that is good for humanity and yet their behavior is more Dictatorship than democracy.

But as I pointed out at the top of this post, they’re not alone. We’re constantly seeing companies attempting to gaslight their customers with claims that by deleting a service, they’re offering a better service … even though they don’t offer an alternative and if they do, it’s either not as good or costs even more.

Which demonstrates 4 things:

Many companies care more about maxing money than doing good things that earn them money.
Many companies are gaslighting themselves more than customers because we sure-as-shit aren’t falling for this rubbish.
Most companies demonstrate the corporate culture is all about managing up rather than doing what is actually right for their customers.
Most companies hire consultancies because they validate their bad behaviour rather than hold them to standards and expectations of customers.

Which is why when a company goes on about how good their NPS score is, remember – it’s coming from a faceless data point, based on an average of other players in their category – rather than the voice of customers and how they evaluate the service in terms of anything and everything they experience and endure in their day.