Mr. Kaplan I’m trying to understand your actions from a business perspective. It seems like you had a knee jerk reaction that albeit noble, from a business perspective is not really that productive.
I recently came across your interaction with a player that resulted in a 30 day ban from him suggesting a divsion/team might need to be replaced.
As a business owner, If I have a manager that manages my business, and a customer points out a problem, and suggests that a specific division/department needs to be replaced, the last thing I would expect my manager to do is ban the customer from the premises for 30 days.
I understand standing behind your staff and employees but I would sooner expect the manger to THANK the customer for making them aware of a potential problem and investigate.
IMO I would ask myself, why does the customer feel this way? What have they noticed that has made them come to that determination.
Lastly If it was my manager who did something like that, they would get a verbal warning, and if it happened repeatedly, I would be replacing them.
The dude broke forum Code of Conduct, and so he got an appropriate ban (plus Jeff put him in his place, which was great). I hate this “customer is always right” b.s.! There are rules. He broke them. There are consequences for your actions; we are adults.
Second of all, IIRC his ban was lifted (or at least lessened), or he was compensated somehow because Jeff thought better of it after cooling off and felt bad for his harshness. Jeff is a really good dude. No need to attack him over ancient history when he wasn’t even in the wrong in that circumstance anyway.
Edit: Plus, I absolutely admire his decision to stand up for his employees. I wish I had a boss like that.
If someone comes into my home and acts like they can do what they want, they’re being thrown out and banned from ever coming through my front door.
Just because you’re a customer doesn’t mean you can do as you please. You sign a contract, you follow that contract. You don’t? Then don’t be surprised if you get booted.
an upset/irate customer is more than likely to share their perceived disatisfaction with my business to many people. Only 2/10 (roughly) will trust their own experiences with me over their friends/family and continue to patronage my business, assuming all 10 are current customers of my business. 1/10 are likely to give my business a try even though the bad publicity assuming all 10 have not been customers of mine before.
Just because you thank a customer for their input, does not mean you go and fire your staff. Part of being managment is calming the person down, assuring them their concerns will be looked into and addressed. That may not be the way the customer suggests, but it also does not mean that I just simply revoke their permission to be on my premises because I don’t like what they say or the method they suggest I address the issue.
A customer is not a single sale. A customer is a potential repeat customer many times over a 10 year span (assuming I’m still in business from not banning every customer I don’t agree with). You may not like what they say, or agree with it, but failing to even investigate their claims means that if there really is a problem, your ignoring it, sorta like the 5 million cars Toyota got in hot water over.
Perhaps the team simply needed retraining or more direction from Mr. Kaplan rather than out right firing. But if he doesn’t investigate, he’ll never know.
Those are fine points, but what do they have to do with kicking people out of your business?
Yes, address problems, but why are businesses suddenly not allowed to kick people out? As far as I am concerned there are businesses that will remove customers from their premises for being rude, disruptive, etc.
There’s just so many more variable that you don’t know that lead to this decision of two years ago.
Jeff Kaplan isn’t the end all, be all, final boss. He’s just the face of the game. That’s like assuming the chief of police is the one who does every single arrest.
Also, sounds like the dude violated the ToS. The Terms of Service is a contract of sorts. In other words, if you brought this “case” to Judge Judy, she’d read the necessary parts and ask “Do you understand?” and if you continue to fight a very clear cut case, then she’d just call you (rightfully so) an idiot.
It happens all the time in brick and mortar stores? I don’t know personally what this guy said but if you get customers who are unruly enough…They can, and are, banned from physical stores as well.
I very much doubt it was polite and stuck specifically to game shortcomings.