You can't walk through a press conference at the Jockey Club these days without stubbing your toe on a customer-centric or a market segmentation, but the concept of consumer-friendly has been getting a good workout.
Schmick new tables and chairs are one thing, but customer service goes much deeper than somewhere to sit and watch in comfort - something which is well known at Sports Road but the system sometimes lets the vision down.
For example, there would be those customers who had a collect in the fifth race at Happy Valley last week. They then had to wait through the sixth versus fifth protest before they got paid, even though the result of the objection could not possibly have had any impact on any dividend.
Now, it isn't like Australia, where races are rapid fire and dividends are declared as soon as possible - even at times with what could be considered an indecent haste - so that the customer can reinvest on the next event, an estimated minute and a half away.
There are no other meetings or bets here until the next race half an hour away but amongst those collecting customers, for all we know, there were people who had somewhere to be or something to do and would have been just as happy to exchange their tickets for cash and be on their way.
There was no good reason why that didn't happen and considering the club fined Douglas Whyte HK$10,000 over negligence in the matter of the protest, a look in the mirror would not have hurt the club.
Then we had fine lines dividing customer content and discomfort that were walked by club officials in the final event on the weekend.
Well, in one regard, not just that race. We are at a time of year when important horses are returning to racing after a decent sort of lay-off and with big targets ahead and there's no doubt that their jockeys and trainers are conscious of the balancing act involved in trying to win their races, as required under the rules, and not flatten unfit horses by asking too much of them too soon.
The week prior, stewards questioned Whyte's ride on Derby winner Akeed Mofeed returning from his break, a big and rusty hulk in need of a race and the flowing of competitive juices, no matter how much work he had done on the track.
On Sunday, Able Friend's trainer John Moore was queried over that horse's tactics, racing at the rear from the outside gate before storming into third in the last race.
It was a predictable tactic, given the draw and it being not only Able Friend's first run for the season but his first at 1,400 metres. Moore said he and the horse's connections had elected not to seek a prominent running position with a horse short of top condition, not wishing to take the risk of being stuck off the track and unable to finish the race off, for the sake of this race as well as those bigger targets ahead.
As we said, it's a fine line and we can presume those punters - those club customers - who have contacted us feeling unhappy about the scenario would have been even more unhappy if Able Friend had been overtaxed with a wide run and finished unplaced.
But if there was any area of customer unhappiness which seemed to have universal agreement, it was allowing Military Secret to run in the same race after the pantomime that went on at the start. It wasn't the first time - and probably won't be the last unfortunately - but it has never ended well whenever we've seen it before.
We had no personal interest in Military Secret winning - frankly, we thought Jimmy Hoffa's body easier to find - and it was a shock to us that he was so strongly in the market, but this was plainly wrong.
The stress Military Secret underwent in breaking away, having to be caught twice and then lined up for his first race for some months was unreasonable. If this was a fine-line situation, then consider the line to have been crossed.
Customer-centric must go deeper than whether the horse was physically undamaged - plenty of customers would believe that they had been sold a lemon when Military Secret was still in the race after being chased and tormented for several minutes prior.
Imagine some lunatic decided it would be good fun to scream at each of the horses as they went on to the track for a race, let's say at Happy Valley, where the crowd is close and the beer garden inviting.
The horses would be unhurt, but we can't imagine that fan would be allowed to stress the horses like that for very long.
Everyone and his dog knows it's about not wanting to give back wagers already made - once you've bet, the Jockey Club considers that its own money - but a scratching, a five-minute delay to the start and most of that money is re-bet anyway. And then you don't have swathes of the growing customer base filthy on the club for failing to take any account of them or whether they got a fair go.
We hear often that it isn't only about reality, but about the customer's perception of what takes place. There will be market segments who thought they got a raw deal with Akeed Mofeed or Able Friend - it goes with the punting territory - but take it as a given that nobody who backed Military Secret came away with a positive perception of how they were treated.
