If you didn’t have a competitor in this world, you could afford to be out of stock, leave broken links on your website and provide poor customer service. But here’s the thing — 95% of the time customers do have another option. They can type a new web address, drive down the street, or switch service providers (what a pain, but we’ll do it!).

Redwood Software conducted a survey to find out what it is that makes consumers want to take their business elsewhere and it was the little things that added up to big problems.

The one thing that irks customers more than anything else (61%) is having to repeat personal information to a human on the phone after dealing with an automated machine. As far as I’m concerned, that machine is a big part of the problem in the first place. Instead of helping people move through the queue faster, all it does is aggravate. (Human! Operator! Person! Help!)

The folks at Piper Jaffray are a very brave lot. They put themselves in close proximity with 5,200 teens (average age of 16.3 years) in order to quantify their spending habits. They did this, so marketers like you could have a better understanding of how teenagers think without having to actually get close to one. You can thank them later. But right now, let’s take a look at what they got.

The survey is called the 25th semi-annual “Taking Stock With Teens” project and it begins with an overview of teen spending by category.

Incredibly, most of their money goes to fashion. Upper-income teens said they’re spending a little less but plan to spend more in the near future. Maybe they’re waiting for the new spring fashions to land in stores. Average-income teens are spending a little more than usual and I don’t even have a guess as to why.