Customer satisfaction

The fourth item that my assignor is looking for in giving away a good game is customer satisfaction. He's running a business, remember. No subject has so angered the discussion boards as this one. Whenever I write about it, a horde of self-righteous umpires takes me to task for daring to compare the pureness and virtues of being an umpire with pleasing customers and money-grubbing capitalism. But....

Good assignors want to grow the business. Businesses grow with satisfied customers. Unsatisfied customers go to other umpire organizations, which gives your assignor future headaches. Good umpires intuitively understand that fourth item although most would never put it into those terms. That is at the core of my first article entitled "What are the Rules of Baseball?" Top umpires are tailoring their games to increase customer satisfaction, but I doubt that they would ever put it in those terms.

Continued...