What Kind of Customer Are You?

Aligning our behavior with our standards

A while back, I listened to a long-time customer complain about the state of our industry.  He lamented that quality mattered less and less.  He spoke bitterly of clients he had served for years who had switched their work to others simply to save a few pennies. 

As I listened, I thought, “But you do the same thing to me.”  Every time a competitor shaved a few cents off their price, he’d shift his business to them.  His standards for customer behavior changed when he was the customer.

It’s a commonplace that we need to treat customers well.  I think it’s wise to treat your suppliers equally well. 

When times are difficult in your industry, you need suppliers who are motivated to do everything they can to help you.  When supply is tight, many companies cut off their least attractive customers.  If it is profitable for your suppliers to serve you, you’re probably safe.  But if you’ve made your business unattractive to them, you’ve placed yourself at risk.    

This isn’t just a consideration for industrial companies. The Federal Reserve’s increases in short-term interest rates have gotten a lot of press this past year, but just as impactful is the way they are draining liquidity from the banking system – over a trillion dollars in the past year. In response, banks are evaluating their customers and reducing credit for some of them.

We all want to be trusted.  Yet often we are trustworthy only when it works directly to our advantage.  We don’t intend to take advantage of others, but it’s easy to rationalize doing wrong if the alternative is losing something that we value.  We know what we think is fair for our customers to do to us, but we have a different standard for ourselves when we are the customer.

For example, one way to make yourself an unattractive customer is to pay your bills slowly.  Some consultants advise that you pay as slowly as you can to maximize your cash flow.  They argue that virtually all companies are willing to accept slow-pay accounts, so the only question is how much benefit you can extract. 

This may seem like sound business practice. Actually, it’s wrong. The Bible speaks directly to this issue: “Do not withhold good from those who deserve it, when it is in your power to act. Do not say to your neighbor, ‘Come back later; I’ll give it tomorrow – when you now have it with you” (Prov. 3:27-28).

And it’s also foolish, if you believe that trust creates value in relationships. To establish and maintain trust, you must deal fairly and openly with everyone, whether customer or employee or supplier, and ensure that both sides gain.  You can’t sustain a healthy relationship if you are the only winner. 

Conversely, if you engender mistrust in one set of relationships, it cannot help but spill over into others.  If your employees see that your goal in every transaction is to extract as much as you can from others, they will realize that you’ll do the same to them if it is ever to your advantage. 

And this is the important issue to consider. Most of us don’t lead businesses, but all of us have relationships – friends, neighbors, family members. Do you think you can act selfishly in your workplace and be a paragon of selflessness elsewhere?

Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash

Many of us compartmentalize different parts of our lives as if we’re making precisely that assumption: that we can be cold-blooded and selfish in one part of our lives and loving, generous, and warm-hearted in others.

Most often, people who live this way are seen as hypocrites. They want a different reputation outside of their business dealings, and they may try to achieve it, but they can’t bring a different heart along with them.

What does ‘integrity’ mean to you? Often we equate it with honesty. Integrity includes honesty but means more than that. The word entered the English language from Greek; in fact, it shares the same Greek root as the word ‘integrated.’ In other words, ‘integrity’ means we are the same through and through. We don’t have areas of our lives that are off-limits for the values we profess. We seek in all things to live according to the truth as we know it.

The King James version of the Bible renders this idea perfectly: “As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he” (Proverbs 23:7).

Are you working to bring your words and actions in line with the truth, in every relationship and encounter?

If not, what do you think the truth is?