What Will Eventually End 'The Age of Customer'?

I am not sure if many realize this, but in fact, with the explosion of social media, and each company's responsibility to be 'aware of what people say', this has truly become 'The Age of the Customer'.

It is a glorious time to rejoice in, but there exists a sad element that will eventually kill this grand time:

• Abuse of power

Yes, it is the common phase in a cycle when people realize they have some power that they never had before, and mistakenly try to abuse it, or those who know how to abuse it, do so deliberately.

This has happened before...

Does anyone remember a time when someone said, 'I will sue you!', and it actually meant something? At that time, large companies bought up huge insurance policies to cover lawsuits...well...actually just legal costs....and it became cheaper to just settle out of court. How glorious was that!? If you threaten to sue, you get money! Meanwhile, many did not understand that this money they 'won' was coming out of their neighbor's pockets because court costs are paid for by government, and taxes pay the government. Actually...I think this still happens, but that is not my point.

Jump back to the Age of the Customer...and all you have to do is ask a question on Twitter, and someone will pick it up and help you in public to show that they are a great company. That is great, and that is a positive example.

However, I am hearing more and more people tell me:

• 'I got help because I threatened I would tweet about them!'.

Therein lies the abuse. When someone decides they are going to use something positive as a way to get revenge, that which is positive, soon becomes negative.

At the very root of this problem is the uneducated consumer who believes pointing fingers, and making outlandish threats to compensate for their incompetence was a way to get things done. When customers looked around in the 90's and wondered why all these customer service jobs in the US, were going to India, I stood by in several jobs and realized, 'This is happening because we want more money to deal with the same difficult people we have become ourselves.'

That is a very sad thought; to know that those who believe because they purchased something, they had the right to run that business itself. Sayings like 'Let me speak to a manager' or 'I will tell everyone how terrible you are!' lose impact because the source of the problem is not the 'company', it is the inability of the customer to read directions, or impose perceptions.

Let us not forget that famous woman, who called 911 because a fastfood restaurant wouldn't give her a cheeseburger the way she wanted. You can hear that gem right here.

I mean really...We can laugh at that person, but all it takes is one person to start a trend. I think Walt Whitman would have jumped off a bridge if he saw some of the blogs that existed today, by so-called writers. (I leave myself open for a shot there.)

Oh and hey...If you leave a bad blog comment...'Im gonna tweet about it!'.

I am kidding, but do you see how that reads?