Chapter 9 of "Measure What Matters" focuses a lot on maintaining a good relationship with communities. By communities, the book really just means the group of people with whom a company will interact. It uses two opposing examples when talking about this: first, the previously discussed Amazon example where the company had to remove books from its users' Kindles due to copyright issues; second, an example where PETA attempted to start a "free the whales" campaign against SeaWorld.
As previously noted, Amazon got a pretty poor response from their actions. Their customers saw them as acting unilaterally, without telling them properly about the problem, and they were understandably angered. Amazon damaged its relationship with its community by acting without letting them in on what was going on, and they had to apologize for it ultimately.
On the other hand, SeaWorld maintained such a good relationship with its community that PETA's campaign fell flat on its face. SeaWorld's visitors and community were willing to defend it against the charges of the animal rights group, and ultimately the "free the whales" campaign went essentially nowhere. SeaWorld had maintained a good enough relationship with its community that it avoided a crisis.
Ultimately, I think these examples illustrate the point pretty well. In business, as in many other things, it's good to have as many friends as possible. If this policy can help ensure that companies actually treat their customers well instead of as sources of profit, that's all the better. Unfortunately, it seems as if in many instances there's sort of a general agreement among companies not to treat customers too well, but only well enough that they'll come back. I think if a new company came along to challenge the current ones by actually treating its customers with full respect, then, as the book has laid out, it would probably enjoy a great deal of success.
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