I started one of my first technology business in 1998. It was only myself and my business partner running the business. Initially, we had to do a lot of adverting to gain new clients. Once we acquired a client, we provided exceptional service, we went above and beyond and made sure the client receives a great value. Shortly after, we received so many referrals and we no longer needed to run any new advertising. It was so easy to gain new clients and so easy for the clients to sign up with us on their new project. This is because the new clients have trusted the referral.

If you ever read the history of Jeff Bezos and Amazon, you would see the similar situation; Jeff focused all his efforts on customer satisfaction. He even had an empty chair in all of his meetings and that empty chair represented a client. Jeff wanted to emphasize the importance of having empathy for their customers.

Amazon is now one of the biggest and most successful online retailer.

But in today's environment, the attitude of businesses toward their customers have changed dramatically. Businesses do not appreciate their customers much and they do not go above and beyond to provide good service and value, in fact, if they feel that they do not like a type of customer, they just refused services or treat that customer really bad.

I think the main reason for such a poor treatment of customers these days is because there is a substantial increase in people's stress especially financial stress level, so people's level of empathy for others have been declining, and this low empathy level has been spilled over to the business owners and their workers in treatment of their customers, they have very little empathy toward their customers so they won't care to deliver above and beyond to their customers.

To be fair to the business owners, there are some types of customers who do not have empathy toward businesses either, some customers take advantage, make unreasonable demands and are difficult customers, so businesses start to punish all of their customers because of a few unreasonable customers.

I remember once I went to a business success meeting and the speaker went off about how the unreasonable customers can bring down a business, which can be true; however, just because there are a few unreasonable people out there, it is not smart or nice for businesses to generalize and treat all of their customers in such unemphatic ways. It is not good for business; bad treatment of customers will bring bad reputation to a business and it can lead to the business going bankrupt.

I hope businesses learn to appreciate their customers and do not punish them all just because of a couple of unreasonable customers.