National Customer Service Week: The HEART Model, Principle #3

“Peo­ple may doubt what you say but will always believe what you do” goes a famous quote about integrity.

It is no small coin­ci­dence that in the mid­dle of our H-E-A-R-T series of five core val­ues in cus­tomer ser­vice is the let­ter A, which stands for ACT with integrity. Integrity is the core within the core of val­ues, it is what lies within us, what we hold impor­tant, what defines our dealings–as cus­tomer ser­vice agents, as man­agers, as work­ers, and as persons.

To have integrity is to pos­sess the courage and self-discipline to adhere to your set of val­ues and ethics. Given a choice between doing what you want to do and doing what you need to do, or doing what is easy ver­sus doing the right thing, which one is it going to be?

The Used Car Salesman

The mere men­tion of the phrase “used car sales­man” eas­ily con­jures images of a smooth-talking, up-to-no-good trick­ster who’s out to make a quick buck out of an unsus­pect­ing client. While not always fair and jus­ti­fied, such an image is not with­out basis. Some sales­peo­ple have been, still are, and can be dis­hon­est with their dealings.

But the oppo­site is also true. There are hon­est used car sales­men out there. There are a num­ber of family-run used car busi­nesses that have ran for gen­er­a­tions with a long list of happy and sat­is­fied customers.

What sep­a­rates the good and the bad? Integrity.

Integrity is a big word, built out of small things. In our daily deal­ings with our cus­tomers and our stake­hold­ers, cer­tain val­ues and traits are desired and expected:

Hon­esty.

Being truth­ful with our prod­ucts and ser­vices – and com­mu­ni­cat­ing about them clearly and accu­rately is a good start. Make sure cus­tomers know what they’re buy­ing and let them know how the prod­uct or ser­vice can address their wants and needs. Dif­fer­ent peo­ple are dri­ven by dif­fer­ent buy­ing deci­sions. Mis­rep­re­sent a car, for exam­ple, for any­thing more than it actu­ally is and you drive the cus­tomer out the door and into the competition.

Hon­or­ing Com­mit­ments, Keep­ing Promises.

When com­pa­nies make war­ranties on prod­ucts, we expect them to ful­fill it. A war­ranty, on a per­sonal level, is not much dif­fer­ent from a promise we make to cus­tomers. When we make promises to our cus­tomers, they expect us to make good on our word. If a call cen­ter agent promises a call back, he or she must call back. When we set expec­ta­tions, we should always make sure they are met.

Should things turn out less than per­fectly, as in the case of a defect in the design, com­po­nents, or work­man­ship, a prod­uct recall may be in order. Prod­uct recalls cost com­pa­nies mil­lions of dol­lars in actual losses and sev­eral mil­lions more in future losses due to adverse pub­lic­ity. Hon­esty may come at a steep price, but noth­ing worth­while, like stay­ing in busi­ness, comes easy.

Con­sis­tency

We are what we repeat­edly do. Cer­tain rules can’t be bent to suit cer­tain par­ties and indi­vid­u­als or because it is con­ve­nient for a par­tic­u­lar sit­u­a­tion. In an orga­ni­za­tional set­ting, the poli­cies we set become our norm, our rules, and it is how we will be known to our cus­tomers in the long run.

We go back to the quote at the begin­ning of this arti­cle: We can extol our virtues, harp on our strengths, using big words in glossy ads, or in our daily spiels. But in the end, it is how we do the lit­tle things, and how we delight every sin­gle one of our cus­tomers that will decide how good and desir­able we really are.