Corporations don't cares about customers, they're collectives of people. They closest they get are understanding the demographics that make up types of customers. When Apple execs say "we care about our customer's privacy" what they mean is they think their customer's prioritise privacy and, more importantly, privacy issues are a liability issue that they and their legal team want to avoid.
That isn't necessarily true. Up until the 1980's prominent universities with a reputation for churning out high quality MBAs had a course requirement for teaching future MBAs responsible management and thinking of customers first.
Hence, almost all major corporations had policies in place for no hassle refunds and comprehensive customer service (Sear's, Macy's, JCPenny's, even K-mart a budget retail chain).
I believe it was Harvard that first removed that requirement due to one of their professors advocating that taking care of the customer wasn't required to have a successful business. And hence they started to churn out the first MBAs that were more focused on maximized business growth (with a focus on stock growth) and hostile take overs of businesses that weren't constantly growing. Other business universities eventually followed suit as they started to see the incoming cash flows to Harvard from their MBAs.
Interesting side note to the above, many prominent business schools are rethinking that approach and are working to revert to pre-1980's curriculums that teach consumer focused management principles as now that we have a large enough sample size to gauge the overall effects of this direction. And that growing consensus is that the predatory practices that had been the focus of MBAs for the past 30-40 years has led to decreased corporate performance across the board (consolidation doesn't lead to healthy corporate environments or healthy corporate culture). Harvard has been near the forefront of this change which is interesting considering how hostile they were to any professor that dared to speak out and question the move away from customer focused MBA courses during the 90's and 2000's, going so far as to fire or censure any professor that questioned the direction of the MBA college.
The decision to offer no question refunds is a conscious decision to engender freer-spending. Consumers are more likely to spend if they can get a refunds. Unfortunately that doesn't remedy the underlying problem of shit software. The cost of many refunds are borne by retailer not the originator of the product. Steam is more complicated because it has different options but I wouldn't assume every refund hits the publisher/developer.
That is true, but it goes far beyond that. It also engenders consumer confidence and loyalty. Not only are they willing to spend more freely, but they are also willing to spend more per product. They are also less likely to want to shop at a competitor or feel compelled to abandon that retailer. They'll also be more willing to urge other people they know to shop at that retailer, increasing the number of customers at that business. Etc. There's a whole host of advantages.
However, you also have to be prepared to deal with and tolerate abuses of the system. One retailer I worked at when I was younger had a generous refund policy. Some people would take advantage of that by walking into the store, grabbing something off the shelf and then going up to customer service and requesting a refund. Refunds were always granted as the customer was always the most important consideration. And while refusing the refund to an abuser would cut down on losses, the inevitable scene that person would make wasn't viewed as something legitimate customers wanted to see. Hence, it was just part of doing business. Only if there was a chronic abuser would action be taken.
It is interesting to note that the company was in growth mode up until they decided to have an IPO and go public around 1995 or 1996. The company became less customer focused and while it initially had a boom in business as new stores were opened due to the cash influx from the IPO, it didn't take long before the business started to go downhill as their reputation started to suffer. Meaning less customers. This in turn led to more reductions in consumer focused policies, etc. Meaning eventual store closures, etc. Now the business struggles to exist as an online storefront. The decline started prior to the advent of mass online consumer spending, but online consumer spending greatly accelerated their decline.
Personal anecdote here. I recently had a problem activating my copy of Windows 10 when I changed the MB, CPU, RAM, and boot drive. I was expecting at best a perfunctory but acceptable customer service call to get it taken care of. I was pleasantly surprised that the quality of customer service was far higher than the last time I had to do something similar (Vista timeframe). I'd like to think that Microsoft overall has gone back to customer focused internal business practices, but it could also just be that I got lucky with getting a great CS representative.
Regards,
SB
