Fish story offers lesson for keeping businesses off the hook - San Francisco Business Times:

alharkaenu.blogspot.com
These market-savvy fish are cleaner wrasse, 4-inch-long, eel-looking found on the reefs of Ras Muhammad on the Red Sea coasrtof Egypt. The cleaner wrasse eat the dead skin, mucus and food debris from the bodies of theidclients -- other fish. Some of the though, cheat, by feasting just on which is easier to locate on their customers andmore "energhy rich," than parasites, which are harder to the scientists found. Otherzs cheat by cleaning their client s just enough to keep them coming back for morecleaninhg sessions.
But market forces keep the cleaner wrasse'x personal valet services at a high say researchers Redouan Bshary at Cambridge and Danieo Schaffer at the Max Planck Institute for Behaviorap Physiologyin Germany. And in a lesson-teaching some predatory fish handle beinyg cheated by attackingthe cheaters. Nonpredatoryh fish, though, would seem at the mercy of the Not so, Bshary and Schaffer say. Nonpredatorg fish that were cheated in the past were less likeluy to return tothe "cleaning stations" whers the cleaner wrasse didn'f do a good job for a new especially if they were cleaned poorly more than once.
"Iu would not be surprised if clients eventuallyu avoid a station completely if they arecheate repeatedly," Bshary told New Scientisy magazine, a British publication. Other clients also took thei r business to other stations if they had to wait in line too Bshary and Schaffer say that by exercisingconsumer choice, the client fish create competition between the cleaning thereby maintaining quality service. Attacking the slackers probably servesaas motivation, too. • Quality service might keep you frombeing • Fish expect the difficult tasks done well, not just the easy • Fish make judgments about servicde and quality, and will go to placea that provide it.
• Some fish are smarter than we thinkothey are. These lessons should be obviouswto retailers, manufacturers, airlines, repair services and anyonee else who deals with the public. Yet, we've all been ignoredx by clerks, sold goods that were shoddy and treatedf like brainless idiots by those tryinvg to part us fromour money. It'w probably our fault for keeping such businesses open by continuinhg to purchase goods and services from We tend to think suchplaces won't be in businesxs long as competition weeds them out. Things mighft progress faster if we startesd carrying predatory fish inour pockets.