In the various blogs I visit, and in other sources, I continually come across discussions about customers and their experience of businesses, large and small. One of the themes that pops up frequently is respect, as in Seth Godin’s recent posting, Trust and Respect, Courage and Leadership.
You would think it would be easy to remember since we’re all customers. The old saying about treating others the way we would want to be treated is perfectly fitting here. And the key is almost always respect.
It’s amazing how flexible and forgiving people are when treated respectfully. Equally amazing is how much they would like to see us succeed when we treat them that way.
But there is another aspect to the matter of respect and that is self-respect.
In the context of business, success is generally about profits and "growing" the business. But how you go about achieving this relates to respect.
If simply making money were the point, we’d all be dealing drugs. To some degree, how we succeed, and what we succeed at are relevant to self-respect.
This isn’t to suggest we should all be out pursuing altruistic ends in our quest for business success. But self-respect easily translates to respect for customers. If you take pride in what you do and how you do it, it’s much easier to capitalize on the benefits of treating customers well.
It’s hard to sell shoddy products or deliver poor customer support when you take pride in what you do. Where problems exist, it’s much easier to identify and fix those problems because you’re alert for anything that may have an impact on how you or your business are perceived.
And it’s also much easier to generate the viral effects of word-of-mouth when this applies.
You attract better and more enthusiastic employees when you operate in this fashion because this is something they, too, are looking for – pride in their work. Some self-respect.
In Seth’s post, he says:
We substituted a new set of ethics, one built around “buyer beware†and the letter of the law. Marketers, in order to succeed in a competitive marketplace, decided to see what they could get away with instead of what they could deliver.
I’ve seen this in practice and it occurs to me that what happens, at least on an individual level, is a confusion of ends and means. We want to succeed – we’re urged constantly to do so. And we’re rewarded for success – the ends.
But self respect is about the means. How you succeed is just as important as the success itself. And I believe long term, ongoing success is dependent on the means. You may bamboozle people once; it’s unlikely you’ll do so twice or a third time.
This isn’t just a problem in business. One look at the recent Olympics is a good example. It seemed that for every report of a gold medal there were one or two reports about doping fiascos – athletes more concerned in ends than in means.
I think as a group customers are a pretty jaded, cynical bunch these days due to the treatment they’ve received from many businesses. But this doesn’t necessarily have to be a bad thing. Surprising them with respectful treatment can be the foundation to genuine success, the kind that continues.
But respect for others is a hard thing to fake. It begins with self respect and if you aren’t operating with it, your long term success is in jeopardy.
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