Demand Satisfaction!

When we were putting the speaker list together for our Customer Service is the New Marketing Summit, we were laser-focused on the practical. We rounded up speakers like Tony from Zappos and Robert from The Geek Squad to talk about specific actions they took to make their company customer-oriented, so attendees would be able to learn from or even emulate those steps and achieve equally effective results.

But along the way we realized that anecdotal evidence — even solid, practical, billion-dollars-a-year-in-revenue evidence — while a strong start, just wasn’t enough. And so we asked ourselves: How can we help evolve the conversation that companies and customers are having? What can we bring to the table that will help these companies communicate better — more effectively, more honestly, more transparently — with their customers? What hasn’t been said but needs to be?

With this goal in mind, we launched at the Summit an essentially open source document we’re calling, simply, The Company-Customer Pact.

This pact is a call for shared responsibility between companies & customers — one that promises that both sides will hold up their end of the bargain to change the game. The document provides a way to opt into a set of shared values. It’s a balanced statement of responsibilities for companies and customers.

You might wonder why we need this, as it seems like common sense. But if common sense were enough more people would be employing these principles now. We’ve been trained by the bad habits of corporate culture to turn away from the anger of alienated customers reacting to an environment where it’s common place for companies to hide behind phone trees, avoid fault, and employ anonymous and in-human call centers that makes them hard if not impossible to reach. Or by engaging in practices like price-gauging and issuing confusing bills and policies.

And what’s the customers response to this, now that, thanks to the tubes that power the Internet, the customers can respond? More often than not it’s revolt, whether led by one man’s descent into Dell Hell or an entire (digg)nation rising up to defend their right to recite a seemingly random string of letters and numbers. But revolt, as any Frenchman from the 18th century will tell you, while thrilling, isn’t particularly pleasant, and it’s definitely not sustainable. We need another way.

Previous attempts at such documents usually end up coming from the company side as a “Consumer’s Bill of Rights,” the most notable of which was put forth by JFK in a speech he gave in 1962. (Never heard of it? Yeah, neither had we.) A customer bill of rights is a start, but that’s unilateral disarmament. This pact is bilateral disarmament; both sides holster their flamethrowers and try to work it out.

The central thesis of the Company-Customer Pact is that at some point we are all working on behalf of a company, and at the same time we are all customers. We all spend time on either side of that fence, and we should take our understanding of each of those roles into whatever situation we’re in. In that regard, while this Company-Customer Pact speaks to two sides, it’s really speaking to one side — the human side.

Customers can expect more from a company that’s signed onto this document. And whie it’s impossible for a company to tell its customers how to behave, they can certainly ask, and by opting into a pact like this they can imply a sense of shared responsibility with their customers. And a statement like this can even give a company’s internal teams some guiding principles for their behavior.

This is an open initiative — a living document. We want your feedback, which is why we’ve posted it on a wiki where anyone can comment or edit. Keep in mind, though, that one of the goals is to have it be simple enough that anyone can adopt it. It contains five basic tenets:

1. The first point reiterates, because it can’t be said enough, the golden rule of “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

2. The second point warms against the temptation to anonymity, because more often than not, in commercial settings anonymous often gives license to be rude.

3. The third point reflects the fact that we all know in advance that mistakes wil be made and that problems are going to happen — to err is human, after all, and we’re both humans on either side of the line. We can embrace this as an opportunity to deal honestly with problems as they arise; done right, this is where lasting customer relationships are forged. Who hasn’t had the experience of seeing a company turn a bad situation around, creating a tremendous amount of customer loyalty?

4. The fourth point is about companies embracing the opportunity of instant, always-on communication. Now that it’s easier than ever before to get the word out to hundreds of our friends and co-workers, it’s somehow harder than ever to communicate with some of the companies we do business with. There is absolutely a mandate to make honest and direct communication between companies and customers as easy and frictionless as it is with the people you friend on Facebook.

5. Finally, it’s vital to show follow-through and to support those who are trying to follow through. It’s a new world, and we all have to live in it together, so let’s cut each other some slack, ok?

Pretty simple all said and done, but also potentially very powerful. If you haven’t done so yet, check it out at ccpact.com and add your name — as a customer, as a company representative, or as both. We’d love to have you take part in the conversation.