Our employees will treat customers based on the way we treat them. I call this the Employee Golden Rule. My formal description of this rule is similar to the familiar adage, “Do unto others as you would want done unto you.” My spin on it is this: Do unto our employees as we want done unto the customer. (And maybe even better.)
The way employees are treated sets the tone for how they treat others—inside and outside of the organization. I’m my new book, I’ll Be Back: How to Get Customers to Come Back Again and Again, I dig a little deeper on how to create the I’ll Be Back culture.
Start by recognizing that even though customers think they are doing business with a company, they are really doing business with the people inside the company. They will say something like, “I really love doing business with them.” Who is them?
The word them actually describes the person or people the customers interact with. They don’t do business with a building or a name of a company. It’s the people. Even in an online company, there are people behind the scenes making sure the process goes flawlessly, and they are there to support the customer if it doesn’t.
That brings us to what I refer to as The Culture Challenge.
In the book, I have seven principles that go into creating the I’ll Be Back culture.