Why Don’t Businesses Embrace the Golden Rule?
I have been thinking for some time about the connection between business and the golden rule: Treat others as you would want to be treated. This rule is a pillar of most of the world’s great religions, and provides a useful way to think about the appropriate relationship between a business and its customers and employees. Great companies make it their sine qua non. Hotel giant Marriott, for instance, states explicitly that “the golden rule has always been our guiding principle.” Others, such as Enterprise Rent-A-Car, preach the same message but in more practical language. Many years ago, Andy Taylor, then Enterprise’s CEO, explained to me that the key to his company’s success was universal: “There is only one way to grow a profitable business; treat customers so that they come back for more and bring their friends.”
When Ron Johnson designed the Apple Store, he said his goal was to design a store based on love. His inspiration was what he considers the essential message of the Bible: “Love thy neighbor as thyself.” Former Telstra CEO David Thodey inherited the least admired company in Australia when he signed on for the top job at the country’s leading telecom. He soon announced that treating customers right would be his No. 1 priority. “Treating customers according to the golden rule is not just one of the things on our list—it is the No. 1 thing on our list,” he told his people.
Customers’ lives are enriched when they are treated with loving care. Good things happen for investors when those customers come back for more and bring their friends.
Companies that have embraced this principle have thrived—not just Apple and Enterprise but also The Vanguard Group, Chick-fil-A, Intuit, Discover Card and Southwest Airlines, to name a few. Amazon is proving that obsessing over old-fashioned customer loyalty still works in the digital world.
I’ve spent my career studying customer loyalty, and at the core of almost all customer-centric companies are a system and organization that live up to this golden rule standard, whether it’s stated in these terms or not. Good things happen when this is your focus.
Customers’ lives are enriched when they are treated with loving care. Good things happen for investors when those customers come back for more and bring their friends. And employees find work more motivating and inspiring when they can treat customers and one another right.
And while many well-performing companies have embraced the principle of the golden rule, many more seem to have missed this idea completely and are instead built on systems that encourage just the opposite behavior. I recently wrote about my own experience with predatory bank fees and the drive for bad profits that come at the expensive of customer satisfaction and erode loyalty. My family just returned from Europe, where roaming fees are so abusive that we had to buy a protection plan from our local mobile phone carrier (priced at eight times our standard daily rate). Who among us has not had similar experiences? Perhaps suffered a punitively large late fee for returning a rental car a few minutes late? Or been outraged by industries pushing back against regulation that would mandate that they act in their customers’ best interest?
So if the golden rule is such a great idea—an idea that serves the best interests of customers, employees and investors—why hasn’t it become the business norm?
If we want to live in a world where the golden rule is the guiding principle, we have to figure out what’s getting in its way and articulate those barriers before we can hope to eliminate or at least mitigate them.
So let’s start this process here: Why do so many companies flout the golden rule—what are the root causes thwarting its widespread adoption?
Please add your thoughts in the comments section below.
Thanks for this thought provoking question. I always believed in the golden rule and I wonder of the applicability of the platinum rule (treat others as they like to be treated) when I think of the world’s innovators - most of us customers didn’t even dream of some of the innovation that came out on the market - we had to be inspired by the innovators ... so if the innovators would treat customers as they would like to be treated would that slow innovation?
As a business architect, I often argue to build HR practices as hire to alumni. No matter the human resource what they say about you when exiting will reflect on the company the brand the people still working at the company. We must be mindful while managing and fair when ending as some part of the relationship can endure either positively or negatively. It is the same reason why I shift "procure to pay" to "needed resources to vendor relationships" and "quote to cash" to "offer to customer relationship"
All long term best in class organisations are based upon behaving positively against core values (respect, fairness, trustworthiness, courage, care for the well-being of others and honesty). This applies to all dealings with customers, employees and stakeholders (even no supporters). Short term organisations may be different, they are not motivated by long term relationships, they may just want a quick sale. @buildingwinningorganisations.com
In the past, a business's reputation was everything. When word of mouth is your primary source of customer growth, businesses act accordingly. These days, new customer acquisition is a skillset supported by technologies that are designed to be easy to use. When treating an existing customer well is more effort than acquiring a new one, or your product is the only option at that moment in time, businesses can go quite far without ever having to address the service problem. Eventually, it will catch up to them once they've depleted the market and/or encouraged new players. Then they'll find that all the effort they thought they had avoided early on will need to be paid back, with interest.
So much to say about the golden rule and how businesses and government have taken it on. For all the money spent on customer experience and design thinking the golden rule often is not considered. Example, my customer experience, design thinking and IoT builds a customer experience that is excellent for 80% of the situations. Great except that the ones in need and the time needed to be spent was always 80% for the 20% of customers with issues. Your entire design thinking and solution falls over because those customers need to wait 20 plus minutes to get someone on the phone. Those people as first point of contact have been trained and delegated authority over helping customers navigate of the 80% of common issues. So the 20% becomes worse in escalations and poor management of issues. The customer support personnel cop it big time to someone else's point that the golden rule goes both ways. I always try to recognise that my frustration and lack of satisfaction is from that company or organisation not the person on the other end. Lastly, when you butcher the golden rule in this way you kill customer loyalty and business because it is proen that these are your most vocal customers. Satisfied they love you for life. Unsatfied that hate you for life and tell everyone in order to vent.