Antagonism is not a good business strategy

A friend of mine turned me on to this story in the New York Times about, Vitaly Borker, an internet merchant who used menacing customer service to generate hundreds of negative customer reviews which drove up the Google search results for his store. This strategy helped grow his business to sales of $20,000 per day and up.

It turns out, however, that shouting obscenities at your customers then threatening to stalk and do bodily harm to the people who've just paid $400 for counterfeit eyewear has its downside. According to CNBC, the proprietor was just arrested for making bodily threats, mail and wire fraud.

Sure you can make a living selling one item to one customer and then moving on to the next. But most businesses thrive on repeat purchases. And while your customer service may not be quite as bad as Mr. Borker's, we all are guilty of doing something to make it easy for customers to look somewhere else the next time they buy. It's just not always as obvious as this.