The Golden Rule = Customer Excellence

“Do to others whatever you would like them to do to you. This is the essence of all that is taught in the law and the prophets.”

– Matthew 7:12

The Golden Rule is pretty much the simplest and most all-encompassing description of customer excellence. I find it pretty amazing that such an ancient guideline could be so relevant today, in business and life in general.

The most interesting thing about the Golden Rule is that the great majority of executives would say that they fully believe that it is the best way to create loyal customers. Yet, customers of the organizations run by these executives are constantly receiving service that is very far from how they would like to be treated.

Why is that? Is it because these executives have hired people that think so differently than they do? Doubtful. If they were that bad at hiring, they would probably have been out of business long ago.

Is it because these executives are just paying lip service to the Golden Rule and really bow to the mighty dollar instead? This is a fairly plausible explanation, but still not the root problem.

The root problem is that these well intentioned leaders do not know how to incentivize their employees to follow the golden rule and hold them accountable. Anyone in management can tell you that two of the most important aspects of good management are accountability and measurement. Firms are great at measuring the bottom line, but not so good at measuring how that bottom line was achieved. They are focused on lagging indicators instead of the leading ones.

This can lead to employees being incentivized to drive for profits no matter what the cost to the longer term customer relationship. We all know that Wall Street is driven by quarterly numbers and with the average employee staying with a firm for less than 5 years, short term thinking is rampant. Short term thinking can also be very profitable in this age of stock options.

So – how can a well-intentioned executive influence their troops to strive for long-term customer loyalty, not just bottom line profits? The tool that more and more leaders are turning to is the Net Promoter Score (NPS). Simply asking your customers how likely they are to recommend your product or service to a friend or colleague can drive some amazing results in your organization.

The problem is not bad intentions, it is bad measurement. We’ll dive into the details of how to use NPS in future posts. In next week’s post I want to show you some firms that have ridden the “Golden Rule” methodology of customer service to some fantastic performances.

Thank you for being a part of our values driven community!

Image courtesy of http://www.flickr.com/photos/seabird7/4894001957/in/photostream/.

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