Golden Rules for Creating Customer Relationships

A sign in my office says it all: The customer is the reason we're here. You should wake up every morning believing that golden rule.

The best advice I ever received was to always do what is best for the customer even if it means we don't maximize our returns. If the client is excited by our willingness to do what it takes to make them win, they are going to be happy long-term, too.

You have to measure customer attitudes and behavior, learn from customer surveys, and understand the value equation: trust times benefits divided by cost.

Some people may say it's all about cost or all about value. Cost is part of value; if you lower the cost, which is the denominator, you are increasing value. But if you increase the benefits, you also increase the value, and trust is there because it is a very important component. It doesn't have as much variability, but without the trust factor being a high index number, the value deteriorates quickly.

Doing what you say you will do is a fundamental step toward establishing trust in a relationship. It's an easy thing to talk about, but it is hard to do. Trust comes from open communication and the ability to convey bad news as well as good news. For instance, instead of declaring, "Here is the problem…" try taking a "this is what we'll do about the problem" approach.

Trust comes from delivering what the customer expects, and over time you have a chance to perform. There is an ethical piece to it and an honesty piece to it, and there's an openness piece to it. In our company, these values are part of our culture, and part of our vision.