CHAPTER 8
The Good Seller

From its origins as a shipper of valuables in the 1850s to its charge card with the famous tag line, “Don’t leave home without it,” American Express has had a long legacy of strong service. But the company left the 20th century without it. AmEx hovered in the 50th percentile for service quality during the years 1999 to 2004, according to research firm wRatings.

Like many companies, American Express was focused on cost containment. The priority was reducing time on the phone with customers. American Express’s nod to service came primarily in the form of a checklist for such behaviors as saying the customer’s name three times during a call and avoiding 10 seconds of awkward dead time on the phone.¹

This not only led to a stiff experience for customers but also robbed employees of the autonomy that helps make for meaningful work. Annual turnover in its service centers, although not as high as the 100 percent annual turnover sometimes experienced in the call-center field, was nonetheless in the double digits.

“Over time, the service had eroded,” concedes Jim Bush, executive vice president of world service at American Express.

To their credit, executives at American Express saw the service slide as a serious problem. Bush took over the company’s service organization for the United States in 2005, where he began a push to upgrade customer satisfaction partly by upgrading the employee experience.

Instead of ending calls as quickly as possible, AmEx call center agents now seek to deepen relationships with customers by providing relevant information and asking about their use of the card. This might sound like the irritating “upselling” consumers frequently face. But under the new American Express program, dubbed Relationship Care, agents typically aren’t selling anything new. Rather, they try to help customers understand all the features of their card so they will use it more.

The company now tracks actual customer feedback instead of measuring adherence to scripts. Call center agents not only have more discretion, but can more easily earn bonuses based on customer satisfaction scores.

The service surge is paying off. American Express’s wRatings scores on service quality dipped in the first several years of the initiative but spiked to the 97th percentile in 2009.

American Express embodies key features of good sellers. Good sellers offer safe products, communicate honestly, and seek reciprocal relationships. The win-win scenario of American Express customers taking greater advantage of card features—thereby spending money that translates into transaction fee revenue for the company—falls into this latter category. Good sellers also show restraint, avoiding practices like aggressive upselling.

American Express isn’t perfect. In fact, a lawsuit filed against American Express by the U.S. Department of Justice in 2010 paints the firm as profoundly unworthy with respect to customers. The suit claims that AmEx’s rules for merchants restrict price competition.² American Express counters that the suit itself threatens competition.

It’s difficult to judge the case at its outset. But the suit highlights hurdles related to being a good seller, including the difficulty of pursuing a higher-touch, higher-cost path with customers. And on the face of the suit, it seems AmEx may not be tackling the issue with as much candor as it should.

Still, the company is doing better by customers than its peers, according to J.D. Power and Associates. The research firm ranked AmEx tops in credit card customer satisfaction from 2007 to 2010.³

American Express also shows that goodness through and through fuels goodness as a seller. It recognizes that worthiness as an employer is at the heart of outstanding service. And worthiness as a steward reinforces the company’s worthiness as a seller. For example, its commitment to community service doubles as a recruiting tool for service-minded employees.

What’s more, American Express demonstrates that an expansive purpose helps firms focus more fully on the well-being of customers. Underpinning American Express’s worthiness as a seller is its vision “to become the world’s most-respected service brand.” It’s a mission at once ambitious and empathetic. After all, serving others ultimately requires a degree of care for them.

This chapter spells out the characteristics of good sellers, showing how they must combine commercial savvy with service in the best sense.

Safety

As a rash of incidents in recent years has shown, many companies have not taken product safety to heart. Reasons vary. Firms may be overly focused on cost cutting, as may have been the case with Toyota. The company was slapped with a $16 million fine in 2010 for failing to promptly disclose problems with accelerator pedals.⁴ They may be obsessed with profits or so fearful about bad publicity that they cover up problems rather than address them head-on. They may be under the threat of cheaper knockoffs. That’s long been a challenge in many manufacturing fields, including toys.

Toy giant Mattel, like many other firms, has turned to China’s giant shop floor to lower its costs. Not only have Mattel and others tapped Chinese workers, but they have further cut expenses by farming out the manufacturing tasks to independent operators. In many cases, suppliers are pitted against each other to deliver products at the lowest price.

A reliance on outsourced suppliers in China contributed to recalls of millions of toys that plagued Mattel in 2007.⁵ That year, the company announced a number of recalls of lead-tainted toys and ultimately paid a penalty of $2.3 million in a settlement with the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission.⁶

The Mattel case and a host of other recalls in recent years on products ranging from pet food to drywall shows that the system of using contract Chinese suppliers is riddled with risks. Despite nominal efforts by Chinese officials to toughen regulations in the country, observers don’t expect government efforts to bring quick results. More than ever, companies have to make extra efforts to make sure their products have a clean bill of health.

Better oversight of supply networks in Asia and elsewhere is part of the solution. Mattel, for example, took a number of steps along these lines after its recall black eye in 2007. It beefed up lead testing requirements and increased inspections of vendors and subcontractors.⁷

But efforts to monitor suppliers may not be enough, especially in light of evidence Chinese contractors find ways to flout such supervision.⁸ Companies also ought to consider bringing in-house more of their manufacturing tasks, so they have greater control over the safety of the final products.

Mattel has acknowledged the wisdom of this approach. In 2007, company executives told the New York Times that they were trying to shift more toy production into factories they own and operate and away from Chinese contractors and subcontractors.

“We do realize the need for increased vigilance, increased surveillance,” Jim Walter, senior vice president of worldwide quality assurance at Mattel, told the newspaper.⁹

The company’s efforts to better safeguard customers appear to be working. Between January 2008 and early 2011, Mattel did not recall any products related to lead contamination.¹⁰

Reciprocity

At a basic level, reciprocity is about creating mutual benefit. Customers give money to a company in exchange for a product. When both parties feel good about the transaction, reciprocity is in effect. The roots of reciprocal relations are consistency and creativity. Consumers on the one hand want the companies in their lives to provide reliable, trustworthy goods and services—the same high-quality haircut or durable work boot over and over. But they also want to be surprised. Delighted by an innovative product that meets a known need or establishes a wholly new category of experience—think hybrid cars, Silly Bandz, and the full-body interactivity of the Wii and Xbox Kinect video game systems.

Reciprocity also means fulfilling promises. In other words, the company will deliver the products and services it says it will.

Home Depot fell down on this fundamental feature of mutually beneficial relations under former CEO Bob Nardelli. As a slew of online comments and formal surveys indicated, the company’s level of service deteriorated to the point that it was violating its marketing slogan: “You can do it. We can help.”

In effect, as Scott Burns pointed out in his MSN Money essay, Home Depot was building its bottom line on the backs of customers. Minimal staffing levels cut labor expenses for the company but cost customers in the form of wasted time.

Reciprocal treatment of customers moves companies away from the buyer-beware mentality that has long ruled commercial transactions. This concept, known also by the Latin phrase caveat emptor, lends itself to a zero-sum outcome—where one side of the transaction loses while the other gains. Amid ever-greater intolerance of corporate greed and a growing desire for social responsibility, consumers expect the dominant philosophy to be seller take care.

Some companies are forging reciprocal relationships with customers. Among the standouts are Amazon.com and its unit Zappos.com. And they show there are multiple paths to sound customer stewardship.

For its part, Amazon.com has focused on low prices, selection, and convenience. In selling books, CDs, and many other products, Amazon provides customers with service that is high-tech, low-touch, and highly reliable. The giant online retailer also has taken steps to improve the service level of partner merchants, including user ratings that keep merchants on their toes and a program to ship items on behalf of partners. Thanks to such efforts, Amazon was the top company in BusinessWeek’s 2009 report of the customer service “champs.”¹¹

Zappos ranked seventh on that list. Amazon acquired Zappos in 2009 and pledged to preserve its independent brand and culture. That culture differs dramatically from Amazon’s when it comes to customer service. Zappos is all about the human touch—including extended phone calls with customer service representatives and handwritten notes from them. Zappos aims to wow customers, partly with a free shipping policy on both purchases and returns.

Both Amazon and Zappos offer customers a reciprocal relationship. Busy consumers gain from Amazon’s notable efficiency while the company’s highly automated system saves on labor costs. Zappos’s unscripted phone service and generous returns policy all but guarantee shoppers will be happy. And while Zappos’s operation costs may be higher because of lengthy customer service conversations and shipping expenses, it gains from greater loyalty. In 2009, for example, Zappos ranked second only to insurance company USAA in the percentage of customers who would “definitely recommend” the brand, at 69 percent.¹²

In Bloomberg Businessweek’s 2010 customer service leaders report, Amazon slipped from the top spot. But it still ranked as the 11th best service provider.¹³

Honest Communication

It almost goes without saying that a good steward of customers will communicate honestly with them. Candor is crucial in moments of crisis, when a company has faltered on product quality or safety. But it’s also an ongoing duty. To care for customers well, companies must reveal what their products are made of, how they’re made, how they operate, and how they should be used safely and for optimal performance.

Disclosures by sellers often are mandated by law. This is especially true for food and drug products. But increasingly, good customer stewardship calls for going beyond required labels and traditional instruction manuals. It means more interactivity in the form of feedback mechanisms that allow companies to spot and fix problems quickly. It also means taking transparency to a new level, allowing customers a view into a company’s operations, finances, and future strategies.

Conscious, ethical consumers want to know how their buying decisions affect workers and the environment. They want to see evidence that the businesses they patronize do not profit-gouge, pay CEOs obscene amounts, or skimp on philanthropy. A more-participatory public also is coming to expect a say over product development decisions.

What does this new naked corporation look like? It may mean letting customers rate products without censure on company Web sites, as retailers like Best Buy and Amazon do. It can include liberal rules on employee blogging and Twittering, as Zappos has.¹⁴ It might mean clearer reporting about financial results, as Microsoft has done with its interactive Investor Central site.¹⁵ It could involve business strategies and dilemmas being laid bare.

A few years ago, for instance, Southwest Airlines CEO Gary Kelly used a company blog to raise the possibility of the airline adopting assigned seating. Over 600 people commented on the idea, convincing the company to stick with its first-come, first-serve approach.¹⁶

Radical openness to customers is counterintuitive. Business success for decades was based on finding a secret formula that no one else could duplicate and exploiting that proprietary knowledge. Exposing everything means rivals can get the goods besides customers. But in the era of Web 2.0 citizen muckraking, secrecy is less of an option. Loyalty is largely a function of trust, which turns ever more on transparency.

And the culture of interactivity means that customers assist companies that reveal themselves warts-and-all. The more-than 11,600 online reviews of Amazon’s Kindle (as of early 2011) help the company find flaws and create desired features.¹⁷ Southwest’s blog serves as a low-cost focus group. Media organizations like the New York Times are inviting readers to submit their own images and comments about news events, which can allow the organizations to provide better coverage.¹⁸

“The new breed of naked executives … discover that once people are interested in you, they’re interested in helping you out—by offering ideas, critiques, and extra brain cycles,” author Clive Thompson wrote in a 2007 Wired magazine essay. “Customers become working partners.”¹⁹

Consider how Goldman Sachs might have fared differently if it had exposed its negative stance on the housing market during the early stages of the mortgage meltdown. Yes, it might have sacrificed some short-term profits, but transparency would have done immense good for Goldman’s standing among customers and the public, especially in contrast to other financial services firms that failed to comport themselves well in the downturn. Goldman could have emerged from the financial crisis with a much cleaner name, rather than with its reputation in the gutter.

Restraint

That fact that Goldman Sachs was rated as one of the least-respected companies in early 2010 shows the importance of restraint in customer care. In effect, Goldman could not bring itself to limit its gains from negative mortgage bets for the sake of clients. Apparently it was not alone in this practice.²⁰ And the challenge of reining in greed for the good of customers applies to companies throughout the economy.

The food and beverage industry faces the question of moderation more than most. Excessive amounts of fast food and sugary drinks are among the causes of the growing obesity epidemic in the United States, which has intensified scrutiny of the roles played by companies like McDonald’s, Coca-Cola, and PepsiCo.

Fast-food firms also have established a major presence in school cafeterias with meal options of questionable nutritional value. And as exposés like the documentary Supersize Me have shown, companies in the food industry have sought to convince consumers to patronize them constantly.

Ed once spent much of the day with a public relations official from a major beverage company. The spokesman explained that his firm’s vision was to have customers turn to one of its drinks every time they felt thirsty. The spokesman himself personally followed the prescription, downing multiple caffeinated drinks each workday.

We wouldn’t want to ban sugary drinks or other food types that have a limited place in a healthy diet. And companies like McDonald’s and Coca-Cola have launched healthy-lifestyle campaigns designed to encourage exercise. But for the most part, the food industry’s approach to consumers tends to be all consuming and dangerous to the public’s health.

Invasive food industry marketing speaks to another key point about restraint with respect to customers. Good sellers respect customers’ privacy. This has become a more significant matter given the way electronic data collection can allow companies to monitor consumers’ behavior extensively. And companies increasingly are spying on Internet users for marketing purposes.²¹ In 2010 the Wall Street Journal found that the 50 top Web sites in the United States on average installed 64 pieces of tracking technology onto the computers of visitors, usually with no warning.²²

Companies should not seek comprehensive knowledge of customers under the guise of providing more intelligent, targeted product suggestions. Despite all its accolades, Google has flirted with crossing this line.²³ So has Zappos. A New York Times story detailed the way a consumer who viewed a pair of shoes at Zappos.com found herself hounded by Zappos ads for this same pair of shoes. “For days or weeks, every site I went to seemed to be showing me ads for those shoes,” Julie Matlin told the newspaper. “It is a pretty clever marketing tool. But it’s a little creepy, especially if you don’t know what’s going on.”²⁴

A Zappos marketing official told the Times that “the overwhelming response has been positive” to this sort of “retargeting” activity.²⁵ But others have warned against such surveillance and the privacy risks it represents. Good companies will respect customers enough not to be nosy—to mind their own business.

Being a Good Seller Doesn’t Come Cheap

It sounds simple enough to be a good seller. Offer customers safe products, be honest with them, avoid ripping them off, and show some restraint. But it is not easy to get all this right, especially when companies have to compete in cutthroat, global markets and earn a decent return for shareholders.

American Express illustrates this difficulty. It competes largely on service instead of price. This means service not only to customers but also to merchants that accept the card, who benefit in part from marketing programs provided by AmEx. One source of funding for high service levels—and American Express profits—is the fees the company charges to merchants when people use an AmEx card for purchases.

But the fees and the rules for merchants accepting the card raise questions of whether AmEx is fully worthy of customers’ and merchants’ business.

American Express isn’t the only credit card network with transaction fees and rules for merchants. The Justice Department suit against AmEx also named MasterCard and Visa as defendants, saying all three had policies “that prevent merchants from offering consumers discounts, rewards and information about card costs, ultimately resulting in consumers paying more for their purchases.” But the Justice Department said American Express has the highest merchant fees of any credit card network. And both MasterCard and Visa agreed to a proposed settlement.²⁶

Among other things, the settlement allows merchants to “express a preference for the use of a particular credit card network,” “promote a particular credit card network,” and “communicate to consumers the cost incurred by the merchant when a consumer uses a particular credit card network, type of card within that network, or other form of payment.”

In a Washington Post op-ed, American Express CEO Ken Chenault argued the settlement terms would allow merchants to engage in “pressuring their customers to use a different card when they pay.”²⁷ He also said there’s no guarantee merchants will pass on any fee savings to consumers and warned the settlement terms would increase the already significant market share of MasterCard and Visa.

“If the government is allowed to do away with the protections we build into our merchant contracts, the net result would be more business for the two dominant networks,” Chenault wrote. “Visa and MasterCard already control 70 percent of the market. When dominant parties gain even more market share, no one will be able to negotiate freely or fairly with them. The inevitable result would be higher costs for merchants and less value for consumers.”

He may be right. But on the surface, it looks as if the American Express rules for merchants effectively gag them. It seems the company ought to make its case for the use of its card—and for the fees behind higher quality services—to consumers. To convince them rather than keep them in the dark.

The issues raised by the lawsuit may prove to be a serious stain on AmEx’s record as a good seller. Still, the company has shown itself to be among the best in customer service overall. Reciprocity is at the heart of worthiness as a seller, and the Relationship Care program is a particularly good example of that principle in action.

Consider some results of the program. When agents reinforce card features through Relationship Care, customer service scores rise by an average of more than 10 percent, the company says. Indeed, in a 2009 report J.D. Power & Associates found that 82 percent of American Express cardholders were aware of the benefits and services associated with their card, compared with an industry average of 70 percent.²⁸

And by devoting more attention to its customers, American Express is boosting its top and bottom lines. Relationship Care conversations contribute to an increase in card-member spending of 8 to 10 percent on average, the company says. For the second quarter of 2010, AmEx’s net income tripled to $1 billion from $337 million in the second quarter of 2009.

“While the economic environment remains uneven, our net income and billed business are back at, or near, their pre-recession levels,” Chenault said in mid-2010.²⁹

Thorough Worthiness Reinforces Goodness as a Seller

In effect, American Express shows that the business that takes care of its customer will find those same customers taking care of the business—even lifting it out of a recession in short order. American Express also illustrates the way goodness as an employer and as a steward can reinforce goodness as a seller—creating a virtuous cycle that’s good for customers and all stakeholders.

GOOD EMPLOYERS MAKE GOOD SELLERS

As we discussed in Chapter 2, great customer experiences depend heavily on companies creating a great experience for their employees. Jim Bush acknowledged this relationship from the outset of his quest to ramp up customer satisfaction at American Express. The company polled existing customer care agents to find what would boost the quality of their service. Among their answers were improved incentives, more career mobility, more flexible hours, and streamlined processes.

In response, American Express increased job flexibility and created new job categories so agents could progress through four levels rather than remaining stuck in one. The company also changed its compensation plan, allowing agents to more easily earn bonuses based on customer service scores.

In addition, the company changed the job title from customer care representative to customer care professional. Agents got business cards for the first time.

These were more than symbolic gestures. Agents no longer merely recite company scripts, but use their discretion to figure out how American Express products can help customers solve problems. That’s made the job harder in a way. Agents like Teresa Tate, who works out of an American Express service center in Phoenix, now have to think on their feet. But Tate wouldn’t have it any other way. “We are getting more and more power to make the decisions at our level,” she says.

Tate, who used to run a restaurant, takes calls from AmEx cardholders who operate small businesses. She is now freer to share her wisdom and her concern for these customers. “I genuinely feel like I’m in this company’s finance department,” she says of her callers. “Having been in small business myself, you need that support.”

This sort of passion and compassion for customers translates into high levels of service, into reciprocal relationships.

American Express’s worthiness as an employer predates the Relationship Care program. The company has made Fortune’s list of the 100 Best Companies to Work For 11 of the past 12 years.³⁰ Going even farther back, American Express offered employees one of the first private sector pension plans in 1875.

These days, AmEx combines kindness with cleverness in its people management. It offers a 401(k) plan that’s in the top 15 percent when it comes to company generosity.³¹ And AmEx has worked harder in recent years to help struggling employees succeed at the firm, rather than usher them out the door.³² At the same time, AmEx employs workforce metrics to fortify worthiness as a seller. Agents’ performance and pay are determined to a large extent by how well they fare on customer feedback surveys. The results are exposed directly to agents, who can view their recent customer satisfaction results, their aggregate results, and how they stack up against peers.

Relying too heavily on financial incentives can backfire. And workplace measurements can be misguided. Look no further than the way American Express used to track the robotic repetition of customer names. But AmEx designed its compensation system based partly on employee feedback. And the strong results of the Relationship Care program suggest the pay approach isn’t distracting employees or hurting service. What’s more, the continual customer feedback measurements act as a self-correcting mechanism for agents—and therefore help keep service quality high.

By blending employee autonomy and a supportive culture with smart metrics—the sort of workplace philosophy we spell out in Chapter 7—American Express shows that worthiness as an employer works to make companies worthy sellers.

GOOD STEWARDS MAKE GOOD SELLERS

At American Express, goodness as a steward also feeds into customer satisfaction. The company, for example, is rated as the fifth-greenest financial service company of 27 industry peers, according to Newsweek’s 2010 green ranking of America’s largest 500 companies.³³ This strong showing came after AmEx finished second in the industry in 2009. American Express’s “environmental efforts outshine those of other credit card companies,” in part by offering cardholders guidance on environmentally favorable travel, Newsweek said.³⁴

Given the rise of the ethical consumer we’ve discussed earlier in the book, such environmental stewardship by American Express amounts to a kind of reciprocity—we will help you live out your eco-values as you provide us with business.

Community stewardship also supports goodness as a seller. American Express has a long history of community service, including a program to match employees’ charitable donations. These days, the company uses its frequent presence at fund-raising activities as an informal recruiting vehicle, says Tom Parker, an American Express vice president of human resources based in Phoenix.³⁵ People volunteering at a five-kilometer run to benefit cancer research likely have a service-oriented personality, Parker explains. He says recruiting employees at such charity events fits in with a broader push to hire people with a service ethos.

“We continue to focus on recruiting employees who understand what it means to build and deepen a relationship with a customer,” Parker says, “versus someone who just has experience working in a high volume phone center environment.”³⁶

You can see how worthiness all the way around becomes a virtuous cycle. Serving customers well increases business, which gives American Express more resources to give back to the community as a steward. Which in turn makes it more of a magnet for people who love to serve. At the same time, superior customer service makes agents proud, which strengthens the company’s reputation as a good employer. American Express, in fact, has used stories from its Relationship Care program in its recruitment advertising.³⁷

The service message also is getting around by word of mouth.

During a recent training session for new employees at the company’s Phoenix service center, trainee Jennifer Paez revealed that her mother owned a beauty salon and used an American Express card for her business. Paez said her mother always seemed to have a good experience when talking with American Express agents. “Every time she gets off the phone she feels better,” Paez said. “I want to be one of those people who makes that happen.”³⁸

With pumped-up agents like Paez, service quality at American Express is likely to keep on rising.

A Good Seller on Purpose

Worthiness that permeates a firm and promotes goodness as a seller also ties back to a worthy company purpose. To a purpose that extends well beyond a short-term focus on shareholders and executives. The American Express vision “to become the world’s most respected service brand” can sound a bit dry, especially compared with more uplifting company missions, such as Hilton’s vision “to fill the earth with the light and warmth of hospitality.” But American Express interprets its vision broadly, saying the overall service goal animates the company’s commitment to community service. A quote from children’s rights advocate Marian Wright Edelman on the AmEx Web site puts the philosophy in a nutshell: “Service is the rent we pay for living. It is the very purpose of life and not something you do in your spare time.”³⁹

Of course, uplifting talk is cheap. But American Express backs that rhetoric up. On the Good Company Index, the company earned our highest score for community contribution. We found it systematically assisted society, in part through efforts to boost leadership skills in nonprofits.⁴⁰

Building the world’s best “service brand” to American Express is about more than just business success. And precisely because of that, the company is succeeding in the service business.

Good Sellers Take Center Stage

Despite very real concerns about consumer privacy and other continuing shortcomings of companies with respect to customers, good selling behavior is on the rise. Evidence of the shift can be seen in the results of the American Customer Satisfaction Index, a measure developed at the University of Michigan. The index has climbed, more or less steadily, from less than 71 in 1997 to nearly 76 in 2010.⁴¹

This is how it should be in a capitalist economy, at least one that prevents the creation of monopolies and polices against predatory practices. Companies cannot remain in business without proving worthy of customers’ business. The bar is set high these days. And it’s heading higher.

For American Express, it is more a matter of revisiting where the bar was. Good service was essential to its success as a charge card company, as a traveler’s check provider, and even to its initial business as a shipper of goods across a still-wild nation. Chenault explained as much in a corporate citizenship report:

When American Express was formed in 1850, transporting personal goods and valuables was an uncertain proposition at best. Yet we guaranteed that a package would be delivered intact. If not, we reimbursed the sender in full. We stood behind our promises even if we could not control every circumstance. And because we did, we earned a reputation for delivering world-class service. Throughout our history, American Express has been defined by the extraordinary care we take to serve our customers, wherever and whenever they need us.⁴²

Well, maybe not for its entire history. And maybe not when it comes to entirely candid communication with customers. But when its service slipped several years ago—when the company grew less caring about customers—American Express remembered itself. Bush sees the Relationship Care effort as a return to the firm’s roots. “We brought it back to its heritage,” he says.

American Express may have left its service legacy behind earlier this century. But the company went back home and got it.

CHAPTER EIGHT SUMMARY

Good sellers offer safe products, communicate honestly, seek reciprocal relationships, and practice restraint.

Safety

• Recent incidents reveal that many companies still have not taken product safety to heart. Reasons vary. Companies may be overly focused on cost cutting, obsessed with profits, so fearful about bad publicity that they cover up problems, or under the threat of cheaper knockoffs.

• A host of recalls shows that the system of outsourcing to Chinese suppliers is riddled with risks.

• Efforts to monitor suppliers may not be enough. Bringing more manufacturing tasks back in-house may be necessary to gain greater control over the safety of final products.

Reciprocity

• Reciprocity—creating mutual benefit—is a cornerstone of the Worthiness Era.

• Reciprocal relations depend on consistency, creativity, and fulfilling promises—delivering the products and services a company says it will.

• Buyer beware is yielding to seller take care.

• There are multiple ways to forge reciprocal relationships with customers.

Honest Communication

• To care for customers well, companies must reveal what their products are made of, how they’re made, how they operate, and how they should be used safely and for optimal performance.

• Increasingly, good customer care calls for going beyond required labels and traditional instruction manuals to embrace greater interactivity.

• Ever-more “ethical” consumers want to know how their buying decisions affect workers and the environment, and the public increasingly expects a say over product development.

• In the age of the naked corporation, less-than-forthright communications will almost certainly breed distrust and disloyalty, while transparency can create competitive advantage.

Restraint

• One of the defining attributes of the Worthiness Era is that corporate greed is being restored to its rightful place—a vice that will no longer be tolerated, rather than a virtue to be admired.

• Marketing approaches that cross the line from informative to invasive are increasingly being viewed with disdain by consumers.

Thorough Worthiness Reinforces Goodness as a Seller

• Being a good seller is easier for companies that are also good employers and stewards, creating a virtuous cycle of thorough worthiness that generates financial rewards.