“Consumers are statistics.  Customers are people.”

-Stanley Marcus.

It's amazing how the little things make all the difference.  Businesses in general, and telecoms in specific, are often simultaneously beholden to and deaf to the customers that ultimately fund their operations.  It is abundantly easy to focus on the bottom line and make as many cuts as the average customer can stomach while still ponying up cash, but that does little to ensure customer loyalty or create new customers.  When Stanley Marcus made this well-crafted statement, he was certainly not referring to service offerings in the world of telecommunications.  The department store magnate was certainly referring to his industry.  Nevertheless, the statement holds true.  Customers are people.

Consumers are the end users who inhabit a chart of profits and losses.  Customers are people who get frustrated at jitter, poor service, ill-prepared and unhelpful CSRs, over-expensive bundles, and an overall perception of an uncaring service provider.  Consumers are what an SP loses when it fails to deliver acceptable service.  Customers are the ones who make the call, put up with the overlong cancellation song-and-dance, and ride a wave of anger to a new service provider.  While there was once a time that the Big Bells could offer sub-par service and get away with it, the current competitive landscape allows no such complacency.  If you can't do what you promise for a reasonable price point, someone else will.  It will be a customer -- a red-blooded customer who is unassuaged by continued attempts at reassurance and who doesn't always make decisions based on empirical data, but rather gut feelings and overall perception of quality-- who decides which service is best for his home or business.