Customer Relations

Overview

How you value and care for your customers also reflects your commitment to social sustainability. Customer relations engages your workforce in co-creating the products and services that society values. When you train your workforce to find mutual value, you help them understand how to be part of a lasting endeavor.

The ability to attract and keep customers in this way is perhaps the single most important factor for long-term business success. To that end, managing customer relations means developing strategies and processes.

Fair marketing

Using a fair marketing process helps organizations generate customer interest in products or services and build strong customer relationships through honest, complete, and clear communications. There is growing demand for greater transparency and more realistic expectation setting about the value proposition for products and services.

Customer satisfaction

Ensuring customer satisfaction is mission critical. When dissatisfied – whether because their views are not acknowledged, they feel undervalued, or their emerging needs are being ignored – today’s customers will become vocal on social media and find alternatives. Companies that develop effective customer strategies and processes include regular two-way customers engagement. They train their workforce on key customer relationship practices. They view their customers as a prime source of vital market information and feedback.

Resources

• Measuring & Managing Customer Satisfaction

Clear communications & disclosures

Product & service disclosures

Government regulations require companies to disclose certain information regarding their products. Different products may be subject to multiple disclosure and labeling requirements and prohibitions.

Some common examples include:

• Federal Drug Administration (FDA): requires disclosure and labeling of drug products and food nutrition information
• Environmental Protection Agency (EPA): requires disclosure of all inert ingredients in pesticides
• Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA): requires use of Material Safety Data Sheets where employees handle certain listed products
• Federal Trade Commission (FTC): regulates advertisement of products and requires that:
  • Product claims are truthful and not misleading
  • Product claims have evidence to back up their claims
  • Advertisements are not unfair

Voluntary Sustainability Product Claims and Disclosures

Many companies go beyond mandatory disclosure. Customers and end users are demanding information about the sustainability aspects of products and services so that they can make more informed purchasing choices. In response, voluntary disclosure of information about the environmental and social impacts of products and services is becoming more common in the business community.

Many reporting frameworks also require these types of voluntary disclosures. The GRI Reporting Guidelines require companies to report whether and how they provide “accessible and adequate information on the sustainability impacts of products and services.” The required information includes:

• The sourcing of components of the product or service
• Content, particularly with regard to substances that might produce an environmental or social impact
• Safe use of the product or service
• Disposal of the product and environmental/social impacts

Important Product Disclosure Programs:

• ISEAL’s “Good Practice in Claims and Labeling” Guide
• The FTC’s guidelines on environmental claims: the “Green Marketing Guidelines”
• ISO 26000 Section 6.7.3’s guidance on fair marketing, factual and unbiased information provisions (6.7.3)

Customer relations basics

Relationships with customers have been at the heart of companies’ operations since there have been companies selling goods and services. As those relationships have evolved, the concept of customer service has shifted to customer relations. The shift in terminology reflects a trend toward mutuality and more dynamic, two-way communications.

Customers are the reason any company exists. Good customer relations is one of the most important assets a company can develop for long-term success. For decades, companies tasked a specialized unit with providing and managing good customer service. Efforts to excel at customer relations has gained even greater attention and resources.

Today, there are many roles within a company with responsibilities for developing and maintaining rapport with customers. Sales people are responsible for the direct, personal interactions with customers. Other individuals collect information and analyze the customers’ experiences, needs, and desires. There are individuals who interact with customers when something goes wrong.

Spreading responsibility for customer engagement across an organization reflects reality: there are many points at which to influence a company’s relationship with its customers. This is especially true in the new social media environment, where customers can share their experience at the click of a button. For many companies today, customer engagement and satisfaction is everyone’s responsibility. Companies are paying more attention to the relationships that employees develop with customers. There are critical moments of interaction where a customer is making an important decision about the company’s products and services. A company’s workforce needs to stand ready to make a good impression.