Zynga & TELUS: Do NOT Treat Customers the Way You Want to Be Treated

The Golden Rule—"do unto others as you would have them do unto you"-- is regarded as such because its validity is thought to be universal and irrefutable.

After all, who could really find fault with the idea of treating people the way one would prefer to be treated?

Zynga and TELUS International, that is who!

"The old adage is, ‘treat customers the way you would want to be treated.’ In our experience, that is completely wrong," declares Jeff Puritt, president of TELUS International, in this exclusive Customer Management IQ podcast.

But before condemning TELUS and client partner Zynga for opposing the long-revered guide to customer centricity, it is important to understand why Puritt so adamantly opposes the Golden Rule.

He explains, "You should treat customers the way THEY wanted to be treated. There is a profound difference between [that and the Golden Rule]."

Insofar as only one answer is acceptable when dealing with customers—"yes, you have resolved my problem"—it is imperative that customer service agents and managers focus squarely on that issue when evaluating performance. Too often, business leaders and contact center agents benchmark against the organization’s own conception of success, and that takes eyes off the factors that truly impact customer delight.

Rather than grading performance internally, Zynga’s Ramon Icasiano explains that "our players (customers) tell us if we're doing a good job or not."

Successful customer management is about "taking an external perspective on quality, on delight. Not from how we think about it, but really how [the customers] suggest [we do]."

Logical and intuitive in principle, this philosophy is nonetheless quite difficult to actually process in the business world. Executives have long evaluated their in-house and outsourced customer service teams from an operational efficiency perspective, and the notion of abandoning those metrics in favor of the murkier, more-subjective notion of customer delight could be a tough sell.

But Puritt and Icasiano believe the benefits are too significant to ignore, and in this CustomerManagementIQ.com podcast, they share valuable insights on establishing a customer-centric approach to customer service and attracting business partners who can align with that approach.