The Psychology of Quality and More

Vampires, Victims and Value

~ David Straker ~

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The fundamentals of any business is the exchange of value. Business started in barter and despite the complexities we lay upon it, still has this principle at the core of all transactions. Managing business means managing the primary transactions to ensure an equitable value exchange is sustained.

Simple in principle, value exchange can be complex in practice. For a start, there are many stakeholders in any business, from customers to partners to employees and various other groups, each with their own interests at heart. The most fundamental of these is the customer relationship, and it to this relationship that this article directly speaks. The principles are equally applicable to any relationship, because all relationships are sustained through the exchange of value to each party.

The Four Customers

The value that a customer receives can be low or high. This is fairly well understood. What is often forgotten, is that the company seeks to receive value from the customer, not only in financial terms, but also such common relationship factors as ease of access, loyalty and so on.

You can thus map customers on a chart that compares the value they receive from the relationship with the value that you receive from them.

Some customers are Darlings, with an equitable relationship for both them and the company. At the other end are the Dogs, who neither give nor get much.
Some customers are Victims, paying over the odds for what turns out to be a less than perfect product or service. And perhaps the worst are the Vampires, who suck you dry.

The Vampiric Value Drain

Vampires are the demanding customers who are take endless effort to sell to, then take every last penny from the warranty or service arrangements

Their insidious nature leads you to spend ever greater time and effort with them in appeasing their voracious demands. But where does this time come from? It comes from your uncomplaining Victims, making the even more victimized. It also comes from the major store of your time, which is with your Darlings, where although you give a lot, you get a lot back, too.

The Dynamics of Value Received

It is instructive to watch the story play out as the Vampires are allowed to continue their feeding frenzy. Because the real story is in the value received by your higher-value customers.

Your Darlings, receiving less and less value, simply become Victims. And your Victims, already getting less than they deserve start to wake up and either quietly exit stage left or fall into the righteous indignity of betrayal (see ‘The Hysteresis of Betrayal’) and volubly demand their just reparations join the throngs of the Vampires.
Notice the fallout in the high ‘value to us’ categories. The bottom-weighted spiral can eventually kill a once-sound business.

The Imperative of Value Recovery

When you are plagued by Vampires, there are clear steps you can take to recover the situation.

The first step is to decide whether your Vampires are circumstantial or pathological in origin. Circumstantial vampires were probably victims beforehand and with careful handling can be recovered as Darlings. Pathological Vampires are unrecoverable and must be exorcised.

As you recover time from the Vampires, you can spend this on the Victims, recovering them to Darling status.

Dogs may be left to lie. If they have hidden potential, they may be trained up to Darlings. And some may just need to be mercifully put out of their misery.

The Economics of Value Recovery

As the Vampires take hold, they take more and more of your time, cost and effort, with your Darlings paying most of the price.

Once recovery starts, effort goes not only back into sustaining your Darlings but also into recovering the endangered Victim species.

When the pathologically true Vampires are recognised, they also no longer are able to harm you and you can safely stake them or isolate them until they leave of their own accord.