A little story time. A few months back, Damien took one of our vehicles in for its annual state inspection to a local place that does inspections, but it’s primary business is tire sales. It passed inspection, and he drove it home. On the way home, he noticed that the tire pressure light was on but didn't think much of it, given the temperature changes. Fast forward one month (we don’t drive this vehicle often), and the light was still on so we stopped at the nearby gas station to check the pressures. Each and every tire was significantly low, but all by precisely the same amount. If it was one tire, okay, but all four and all four by the same amount?
Just seemed too odd and brought up the question, did the inspection place do this on purpose in the hopes that we didn’t know much about vehicles and would take it back for them to “fix” so they could then sell us a new set of tires or some other unnecessary service like replacing the tire pressure sensors?
All of that got me thinking about integrity in business. It was around this same time that someone commented on one of my posts on LinkedIn in which I shared Book Brew 5. The comment mentioned the book The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz. It is a great short read, full of impactful information - definitely a must read. The first agreement is about being impeccable with your word - basically, acting with integrity. Covey also talks a lot about integrity in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People and lists it as one of the core principles that leads to trustworthiness and effective relationships.
FTC’s New Ruling on Fake Reviews
Around this same time, I read a post about the new FTC ruling that will ban businesses from posting fake reviews. The exact wording is “prohibits selling or purchasing fake consumer reviews or testimonials, buying positive or negative consumer reviews, certain insiders creating consumer reviews or testimonials without clearly disclosing their relationships, creating a company-controlled review website that falsely purports to provide independent reviews, certain review suppression practices, and selling or purchasing fake indicators of social media influence.” While it is no surprise to me that some businesses choose to operate in such deceptive ways, it’s nonetheless disappointing to know that it is that bad that the FTC had to step in and make this ruling (one I’m in favor of, btw).
Some might think that fake reviews aren’t that big of a deal, but in reading the works by Robert Cialdini with Influence and Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein with Nudge, there is a huge amount of influence behind reviews when it comes to consumers making decisions. In Nudge, they talk about how collaborative filtering influences our decisions - this is when we “use judgments of other people who share your tastes to filter through the vast number of books or movies available in order to increase the likelihood of picking one you like” (think Netflix recommendations or ratings from IMDB). In Influence, Cialdini talks extensively about social proof and how we are persuaded by the actions of others. “98% of online shoppers say authentic customer reviews are the most important factor influencing their purchasing decisions.”
So, the fake reviews/testimonials are just another version of a scam. A scam like purposefully letting the air out of the tires of your client’s vehicle to get them to come back and buy new tires.
Practicing Integrity in Business
Don’t be a business that scams its clients. You will have better long-term results and client loyalty when acting with integrity and transparency.
We recently had a client who hired us for a second time. It was multiple years between the first and second time, during which our pricing structure changed, and our prices increased since the cost of doing business increased. The information on our current pricing was communicated to this client on at least six different occasions because our top value in our business is integrity and we want to ensure full transparency with our clients on our process and pricing. Fast forward to when they needed to select their final service, they reached out to express shock at the increase in rates. We could have just referred them back to the various communications which they received and possibly read (we get that no one reads anymore, hell, no one is likely ever gonna read this, so monkey fart, ha!). Instead, we decided to take the Jocko approach of Extreme Ownership and approach the situation with the understanding that we clearly didn’t do our job of communicating properly. So we made some changes to the rates and offered a discount, which made things right for this client. They were appreciative and walked away happy. Did we make the full amount of money from the sale we expected? No. Did we leave the client in a position where they felt we acted with integrity and will come back to us for a third, fourth, fifth time? We hope so.
Ponder This
- What small actions can you take to ensure integrity and transparency in your business?
- Do you feel FTC regulations on fake reviews will significantly impact consumer trust?
- How does extreme ownership apply in your interactions with clients or customers?
Books
- The Four Agreements - Don Miguel Ruiz
- The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People - Stephen Covey
- Influence - Robert Cialdini
- Nudge - Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein
- Extreme Ownership - Jocko Willink
Comments