3 Rules Of Customer Experience Ethics

Having the opportunity to work directly with the customer is a huge responsibility. In any given scenario, the customer experience defines their perception of your product, service, and company. No matter what you are doing, if you work directly with the consumer, you are the brand ambassador for your firm.

Things get a bit murkier nowadays in the world of high technology. In a world that seems to be dominated by apps and automated messages, the customer experience is more crucial now than it ever has been before. After all, we all know what happens when a bad customer experience goes viral.

Because of this, businesses have begun to realize the true importance of the customer experience. Many companies have trainings put together to enhance the customer experience in a way that was never required before.

That being said, there are certain ethical components that should be considered when attempting to provide excellent customer service. Failing to adhere to these ethics will have the opposite effect, even if you have the right intentions in mind.

1. Do Not Misrepresent
2. Follow Through on your Promises
3. Make Sure the Customer is Truly Better Off

Let’s look at each one individually to gain a full understanding of the ramifications of failing to adhere.

1. Do Not Misrepresent

Misrepresenting your product, service, or company is not only wrong, but in some cases, it could be illegal. This is to what people are referring when they discuss “false advertising.” Misrepresenting can be something as large as flat out lying about your product capabilities, to something as small as saying your company is the absolute most inexpensive option available.

Although the potential customer may have a positive experience with you, their experience does not end when you close the sale. Your customer has to have the correct expectations about what they are getting in to. If those expectations turn out to be false, the customer experience can be dramatically ruined.

In this case, honesty is always the best policy. It’s never a good idea to just say things to make the customer happy or to get a sale. The truth will always come out in one way or another.

2. Follow Through on your Promises

Let’s imagine a scenario: a customer calls you and begins to complain about a defective product. Your initial instinct would be to work with the customer to fix it. After several failed attempts, you say something to the effect of “Let me look in to this, and someone will call you right back.” Following through on that call back, however, rarely happens.

It’s not because you don’t care, and it’s not because your company doesn’t care. It’s because we all get bogged down with so many tasks during the day, it’s incredibly easy to push low priority work to the side for later on. Eventually, that low priority work ends up being forgotten about.

But, you know who did not forget about it?

That customer you promised to call back!  That customer is now angry and telling all their connections about the negative experience with your company.

It’s incredibly important to have a system in place that enables you to be organized enough to complete all of your work. It’s also important to realize that even if a task may be low priority for you, it might be the most important thing in the world to that customer.

3. Make Sure the Customer is Truly Better Off

This one is tricky, because as salespeople, we are all trained to essentially discover a customer problem that our product/service can fix. It might sound easy, but where do the real customer needs end and the manufactured problems begin?

Discovering client problems and needs is crucial for any positive customer experience. Fulfilling those needs is even more important, because it ensures a happy customer and a healthy bottom line.

Manufacturing a problem for the customer just to get a sale is not the way to discover a need. If the customer has a real need or a real problem, the salesperson has to be good enough to discover it and fulfill it. By creating a false problem for the customer and closing a sale when they will obviously be worse off in the long run, you are damaging not only your reputation, but the reputation of your company.

Creating a problem that isn’t real will also cause the customer to second guess their decision and have buyer’s remorse, which is horrible for customer experience. It makes them more susceptible to cancelling the sale.

At the end of the day, adhere to the above 3 rules of customer experience ethics for a happy customer, a solid company reputation, and personal financial success.

Contributor Info

Jason Karaman, MBA is a marketing executive/team leader for Marriott Vacations Worldwide and the founder & author of www.ExpertCaller.com. ExpertCaller is a website designed to help people who work in sales, marketing, and business with the goals to promote people's confidence, develop their skill sets, and increase their income. He also currently works in sales & marketing at a multinational company.