— “My challenge is keeping employees engaged. How do you maintain a sense of purpose if you think your customers hate you?”
Your customers DO hate you. It's not just what you think, it's reality.
Maybe rather than trying to maintain a sense of purpose for what you're doing, you should take a step back and question WHAT you're doing, and whether it has any purpose in society at all other than making you money?
Very. Most don't even know how much a dozen eggs cost, much less how much rent costs, much less how little disposable income people have. Money is just numbers to them. It's not necessary for their survival only for their status. So it's a totally different reality for them.
Oh I know. I used to work in middle management for a franchise and it was so bizarre to be at the corporate meetings. You have the people from corporate talking about how profit is up from last year, and franchisees complaining to them they need to increase prices more because minimum wage increased and profit percent is down.
It does not matter to them that they are receiving more money than ever because the actual money doesn't matter. All that matters is they are getting a bigger portion of the money than anyone else. It's just a high score for them to run up.
Classic narcissist trait. Complete and funnily honest bewilderment at how it is possible that some people don't love and admire then.
My dad who is estranged from the whole family (because of that) was one level below the C suite at a huge corporation. Treated everyone like shit, surprised Pikachu face when one by one the family abandoned him.
I guess it takes to be such a psychopath to make it that far on the corporate ladder.
Even more out of touch to phrase this as a new development for the employees. Guaranteed the people on the bottom have fully understood this for an eternity.
Helping them come to accept this thing they've always known is "my challenge".
Listen to these guys talk about how they're proud of what they did... NO recognition that all those 'denials' are denying real people the care they need.
"I keep taking more from them and they don't like it?!"
Hate is the cost of squeezing those extra dollars. Extra profit isn't free, they're lowering another game slider for it, and that slider is how much your customers support your actions. They're only still around as a customer because all the other options have been bought out or run out of business.
The only reason customers are engaged is because the service sucks, the product sucks, the support sucks, the tos sucks, the sneaky fees suck, the greed sucks, the CEOs suck.