In a rapidly evolving political and corporate environment where lying, cheating, and stealing have become the norm, product manufacturers seeking competitive advantage need to instill trust and respect with all stakeholders – from customers to suppliers.

Adding fuel to the fire are misrepresentations or outright lies by product manufacturers promising to “cure what ails you” in arenas from health to foodservice. 

As if this wasn’t enough, it’s now becoming increasingly difficult to trust or respect reviews about a company or its products. Various schemes designed to show solid ratings no matter what consumers really think are creating more angst, uncertainty, and discomfort.

All this malaise adds up to customer disservice. Consumers are becoming increasingly suspicious, and there’s nothing around the corner to stem the trend. Or is there?

Old-fashioned, honest, and competent customer service can become a product manufacturer’s best friend. This encompasses everything from claims to communication. Customers, employees, and even shareholders – key company stakeholders – need a break from the constant misinformation and disinformation assaults. In this view, “customer service” really becomes “stakeholder service.”

Companies that make stakeholders feel they can trust, like, and respect the brand and demonstrate it every day by the way they do business can reinforce both reputation and revenues.

Nowhere is this more on display than Costco. The company, with no formal advertising and marketing department, built and has maintained an excellent, trusting, and loyal relationship with an ever-growing customer base. Employee turnover, a mainstay of many retailers, is decidedly lower at Costco. (I’ve seen the same employees there for many years. In a quarter-century of doing business with Costco, I’ve consistently seen a customer service-driven culture that promotes honest dealings in everything from initial purchase to returns.)

Costco is living proof that companies can do right by their stakeholders and make a ton of money at the same time. This, unfortunately, is not the case in a corporate culture increasingly dedicated to “taking the money and running.” For example, private equity firms are gobbling up companies right and left, then driving all efforts toward the best bottom line possible – even if that means abandoning all stakeholders except shareholders along the way.

So much of doing right in the customer service arena is natural and intuitive. Unencumbered by bottom-line-driven corporate mandates, making and keeping customers and other stakeholders happy typically ties to a few time-honored principles. Among them are:

1. Say what you do. Do what you say. This may be a natural course of action for a startup company trying to build its reputation and brand through word-of-mouth and social media reflecting that word-of-mouth. Being truthful about the brand and its policies tends to work well until rapid growth occurs. Armed with more lucrative advertising and marketing budgets, and higher demand to fulfill orders and outdo the competition, too many companies start making grandiose claims that they can’t or won’t support. Labels hyping product health benefits in misleading ways are just one sign of this malaise. Phony customer support claims are another. Instead, as Costco has proven throughout its decades-long growth cycle, make marketing match promises. Their customer-first policies initially drove growth via word-of-mouth, which then exploded into the media – both mainstream and social. 

2. Emphasize personal communication more than ever. In our AI-driven, often impersonal world, being able to actually talk to someone with questions and concerns is once again gaining traction. While, in the name of efficiency and cost-cutting, many companies are gravitating toward all things automated, wary and weary customers want to find trustworthy, likeable, and respectful partners. A real live human being (not conversational AI lookalike) can do wonders to make customers feel a company has their back. (Even those who prefer interacting technologically can feel assured that there’s an easily-accessed live support representative at the ready if needed.) Of course, it will become more difficult to distinguish real from AI voices as technology evolves – but that’s an issue to be addressed another day.

3. Come across as real and caring. The scripted, “I apologize…” commentary out of the gate is wearing very thin. It establishes that the customer has been relegated to a series of scripted questions and statements – which does little to build authenticity and caring. While there need to be standard frameworks that customer service reps and others follow for reasons of best practices and legality, there also needs to be built-in latitude to converse in a sincere way. Rather than starting with an apology, state a commitment to issue/problem-resolution.

Lying, cheating, and stealing will continue to be all-too-prevalent. Stand out from the crowd by being totally committed to trust, like, respect with all stakeholders.

Mark Lusky (www.markluskycommunications.com/mark-lusky-bio) is the president of Lusky Enterprises, Inc. (www.markluskycommunications.com), a 41-year-established marketing communications company dedicated to clients that live and breathe trust, likeability, and respect (thereby eschewing the “lie, cheat, steal” culture so prevalent today). Contact him at: 303-621-6136; [email protected].