As explained in an article from The Economist, a new trend emerging in the business world is the integration of chief customer officers. CCOs are intended to enhance the customer experience. As the Internet has grown, it has become far easier for customers to express their negative experiences with companies for others to see.  This communication has led to customers forming opinions about companies without firsthand experience. Ultimately, customer service has taken on an even more important role than before.

Is too much emphasis being placed on the satisfaction of the customer? In essence, the customer is the single most important aspect of a company’s success. There simply is no company without the customer. Too often, customers are forced to speak to automated machines when calling a company. This is a basic practice that, if altered, can significantly improve customer happiness. Nothing screams bad customer service than spending an hour speaking to a machine.

It’s undeniable that customer service is vital to success. Dissatisfied customers can have a major impact on companies. As stated in the article, bad customer service saw many customers leave AOL when other alternatives were available. With this in mind, it is of utmost importance to make sure that customers are happy. Having specific roles within a business that focus on simply finding ways to improve the customer experience is a good way to improve a company as a whole.

There is an accepted misconception that slavery is dead in the modern world. However, a recent article in The Globe and Mail opens the window to a world of unpaid labour in the city of Vladivostok, Russia.

The article exposes the story of Babai who, like many others from North Korea, is working up to 12 hours days renovating the Russian city. However, their payment is not provided to them but rather to the Worker’s Party of North Korea. In addition, the workers are living in inadequate conditions with up to 100 living in an apartment together. Although wrong, the totalitarian regime of North Korea is not the ethical issue at hand here.

The immoral judgment lies in the Russian businesses and government that choose to hire North Korean workers despite the obvious lack of payment. In the business world, it’s inevitable that costs need to be minimized. Foreign workers are an easy way to cut costs.

However, there are ethical choices that need to be made prior to cost minimization. The moral question facing Russia is whether to support the poor treatment of North Korean workers by providing jobs or to take away the opportunity to work and escape their homeland? The sad truth may be that unpaid labour in Russia is the closest that the North Korean workers will get to freedom. For many, bondage and liberation has become synonymous.