Why Telling your Team to “Treat Others Like You Want to be Treated,” Isn’t Good Advice

The importance of customer service in business is largely overlooked. Whether you sell products or services, and run a small or large company, premium customer service is of equal importance to your continued growth and success. Yet, achieving outstanding customer service in any business is a challenge. People are vastly different and, quite frankly, often difficult to deal with. Luckily, customer service is something anyone can learn, regardless of age, background or prior experience.

One of the main reasons CEO’s and top management struggle to achieve outstanding customer service is due to the fact that they tell their CS employees to, “treat others like you want to be treated.” In other words, treat customers how you’d like them to treat you.

While this advice may be helpful in the context of personal relationships, it’s actually counter-active when it comes to business and the servicing of customers.

Definition of Service: The action of helping or doing work for someone. 

In the context of business, what’s important to understand about customer service is that it is not always going to be a mutually respectable interaction, or relationship, between the customer and employee.

Bill Gates: Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.

Therefore, CS workers must be trained to understand the following concept:

1. All customers have different needs, priorities, and goals.
2. Therefore, to treat them in the same way that makes the individual CS worker feel good, typically won’t have the same effect on the customer.
3. Lacking a positive effect on the customer, the customer service worker becomes a nuisance and is no longer able to provide help.  
4. At this point, customer service workers should be able to understand why “treat others like you want to be treated,” must be changed to “treat others how THEY would like to be treated,” in the context of business.

All in all, the customers perception becomes your reality.

While it may take some getting used to, and several training sessions with your customer service department, this simple solution to creating outstanding customer service can truly make all the difference to the rate of your company’s success.