Today’s guest post is written by Lisa Gerber.

I had an interesting conversation at a holiday cocktail party with the COO of a ski resort. He was sharing with me a complaint he had received about the quality of grooming on the cross-country trails. It was bothering him and he was trying to decide how to respond.

The problem, he explained, is people have high expectations for the cross-country trails but the profit margin is so small it’s not a priority for them. When the weather is challenging (that’s ski resort speak for “when it rains”) grooming requires more resources so everything is shifted to get the alpine trails groomed, and cross country trails suffer from it.

So what do you do? Offer him a refund? Apologize and explain about the weather challenges? Tell him he isn’t an important customer and the focus on grooming last night was on the more profitable alpine skier? (more…)