In recent months I've engaged in a number of research projects for clients of The Haven Group. Several CEOs are on a mission to identify areas of improvement in their companies' performance. To aid in that assessment, some of us collaborated to develop a tool that measures performance from the perspective of a most critical audience: the customer.

Not surprisingly, these highly inquisitive executives initially focused their attention on customer perceptions relating to quality, reliability, price competitiveness and similar issues common to the determination of customer satisfaction. In short order, however, we found ourselves drilling more deeply into the core of a printing company's perceived value to customers, surfacing issues related to differentiation in the marketplace and consultation in the sense of understanding customer needs and creating solutions to meet those needs.

No pain, no gain

What interests me in all of this is that, aside from the functional aspects of their companies' performance, these executives expressed great interest in knowing whether customers trust them to always do the right thing. They were unified in their agreement that, as a foundational premise, honesty is non-negotiable. It is not something a company packages as part of its “sell.” Rather, honesty, and the trust it engenders, is a critical component of a company's character. It demands consistency, it involves courage and it requires an iron will that resists convenient or easy shortcut solutions.

Aligning abstract core beliefs with the realities of the day-to-day business world can be painful. However noble it may be, high ideology is too easily displaced by what's convenient or expedient, particularly where executives are pressed the hardest at the bottom line.

Happily, when asked under what circumstances they would be willing to release their unwavering commitment to honesty, the exceptional leaders I questioned responded with one voice. “There are none,” they said.

Joan Weisman, president and CEO of The Sheridan Press (TSP) (East Hanover, PA), is a case in point. “My requirement that TSP employees be honest in all things is not presented as a lofty ideal that everyone is asked to aspire to,” she says. “Rather, being honest is viewed at our company as enlightened self-interest that clearly defines how each employee's day-to-day behavior contributes to the success of our business.”

Weisman stands first in line in accountability to those high standards. Consider the customer who called about a billing error that was discovered late in the year. Upon checking, Weisman discovered that not only was the invoice incorrect for the period in question, but TSP's monthly invoices for the job had been overstated for the entire year — a fact of which the customer had no knowledge.

The situation presented Weisman two choices:

1. Advise the customer of the cumulative billing mistake, and force a “substantial” downward adjustment to TSP's year-end profitability

2. Adjust only the invoice in question, report a good year to shareholders and quietly move forward, knowing that the accounting weakness had been corrected — no harm, no foul and no one the wiser!

Weisman informed the customer of the mistake, adjusted the billing for the entire year and accepted the financial hit as a cost of leadership.

Defending her decision, she says, “Our commitment to being honest in all things — not just the easy things — is our lifeline to the soul and character of who we are and why we exist as a company. Being honest, especially when we are tested most severely, simply makes us stronger.”

Courageous!

How do you rate?

From the customers' perspective, a broad range of considerations determines their satisfaction and loyalty.

Using the aforementioned diagnostic measures buyer perceptions against a range of sales, administrative and operating metrics. Many of these metrics relate to the fundamentals, such as sales, service and delivery. Not to be overlooked in all of this, however, is the fact that from the customer's perspective, it is far preferable to do business with a company you trust. There's less suspicion. Less risk. Less time devoted to checking facts and questioning details.

Doing business with a company that can be trusted simply makes the customer's job easier. It's a value-add they seek, and it's one they are willing to pay for.

So the question is, how do your customers rate your company for honesty and trustworthiness?

You likely already know, without even asking.