There's been a bit of kerfuffle lately about Kindle and DRM (see part 1 and part 2, though you can mostly skip part 1).

Megan McArdle wrote:

This is why customer service matters. It's often the first thing to be cut by companies, because bad customer service doesn't show up anywhere on the bottom line. Not until much later, and not very clearly even then. But I'm willing to bet they'll lose substantial sales to people who see the first post, but not the second.

I won't rant here about why DRM is evil. But Amazon has no excuse for not anticipating people's concern over it. Recall that "DRM-free" was one of Amazon's biggest talking points when they launched the Amazon MP3 store in 2007. So the lame excuse Dan received that "we've never run into this problem before" and that it was "a training glitch" ring hollow.

So Amazon is getting a lot of juicy bad publicity and unwanted attention to the power DRM gives publishers over stuff customer thought they'd bought on their Kindles. Whether it's a good policy or bad, whether DRM is evil or great, doesn't really matter in this respect. Amazon screwed up and let a little tempest be stirred up because they didn't anticipate awkward questions and train their people how to answer them.

By the time you've been in business for a week or so, you'll have done something a customer didn't like. I can say this with confidence, because some customers don't like anything. They don't want to pay for what they buy, they expect you to deliver it to their house, and they think you should mow their yard while you're there. Anything less is just poor service, in their minds.

You can't please everybody all the time (though you should still make that your ideal). As you build your business, you'll eventually put in place some policy that restricts what a customer (or employee) can do, and they're not going to like it. But you can make it much worse if you haven't explained clearly to everyone in your employ what the policy actually is, and how to respond to questions.

I see companies — even large, well-run companies like Amazon — apparently taken by surprise when people don't like new restrictions placed on them. And frequently the companies' first response makes it worse by obfuscating, denying, hesitating, or lying about it. If you're going to do it, do it, be clear about what and why, and don't dodge. If it turns out to be a mistake, don't dither and hedge and pretend, just apologize, fix it, and move on.

Clear and honest communication won't make everyone happy, and it won't turn a good policy into a bad one. But fuzzy or bad or dishonest communication will make any policy seem worse than it is, and will turn an annoyed customer into an outraged former customer.