Aigerim Karimova
Marketing, 11.816

Essay
What are the opportunities in ethically dealing with customers?

Do we really need ethically dealing with customers? Why? Can we have a deal with client without ethic? Where will it lead? I will try to give answers on these questions that you have read above in my essay.
I would like to describe short stories which happened with my mom in the past. First story is about her job in travel agency as Tourism Manager. She worked in big company that had a lot of clients. A big amount of clients means high salary. Everybody knows that. There were a competition between workers; everyone wanted to have one or two rich clients according to whom they could not be afraid about salary and profit from selling. So, these travel agents forgot about ethics and openly told to poor or medium clients that they had nothing to offer them. It was awful. They fended off them as if from annoying flies. There was such situation as client came and worker cast him out just glancing at him. This client came to my mother and told her about such attitude. She was a top-manager and she was obliged to solve the problem.
When I heard about this attitude to clients, who did not have enough money to order “VIP” tour, I was outraged. It’s unfair. I think that any kind of business it’s first of all service. These workers has a job, they should serve clients and earn money. Elementary, if they understand that client cannot pay for expensive journey, they should have plan B, cheaper proposal that can satisfy tourist. There must have a place respect, courtesy, and knowledge of his place, understanding and patience. The customer is always right.
When my mother solved problem she had realized that this client was influential and rich man. Do not judge people by their looks. This client (maybe we will give him a name, Max, for example) was appreciate for my mother for her attitude, for respect and friendliness. My mom applies to everyone equally, regardless of social status and appearance. That's why she has a lot of tourists, both new and old.
I remember that five or six years ago mom had big problems on the job. The airlines by which their tourists had a flight became a bankrupt and announced its failure to bring tourists back. There was a huge scandal. Mass Media surrounded travel agency and asked about future actions, what they would do and how they would solve it. Tourists’ relatives and friends cussed with travel agents, they were furious about unreliable partners which were chosen by the company. According to this scandal my mom heard huge amount of unpleasant words. Mass Media tried to turn the words, their video operators did montage and voilà, everybody thought that there were the worst people at travel agency. My mom and director of agency had found a plane and they were ready to bring their tourists in Kazakhstan. When they asked Mass Media to come, they refused because they needed only tragic stories where they could find who was guilty. Tourists were successfully returned to motherland, and everybody forgot about it.
I know that I will always support my mom but in situation above I cannot do it. When you are selling tour to tourists you guarantee the vacation without undue incident. How can you guarantee it? By partners’ choosing. If you have reliable partners, there will not take a place such kind of situations. Reliable partners will tell you if they have a finance problem, will not them? But I agree that people are learning from their mistakes. And, I hope that agency’s workers are.
When my mom was young she had done several minor mistakes in her job. She lost some tourists, but understood how to avoid doing them. If you want to save your client you should do everything correctly and distinctly. Sometimes you cannot see out and indicate the wrong time of flight, or mix up the name or surname, or to make a mistake in the dates / type of room / guest placing, etc. The attitude of customer for such mistakes can be different. If he or she has a positive attitude to you there cannot be any problem, you will just change data and that is all. But in some situation one such mistake and you lost a client. I think that first of all travel agent should become a friend to customer. Why? Because you organize his or her rest and they trust you so important business. According to tourists mom’s colleagues were insincere and arrogant. They had a strained smile and eyes with envy. Before the client - they are very polite, and when he or she goes away - they throw mud him / her. Why do they need it? In my opinion, client is your friend. You have to have good relationships with him. He / she is your breadwinner.
And the last point of first story is about the competition among colleagues. My mom had different cases when her colleagues asked her clients about price which she told them and after that they offered cheaper price. It was unbelievable for me. One company, one office, one room, one collective – and such behavior. It is terrible! If there is no ethic within the company what can we tell about ethically dealing with customers.
Can we have a deal with client without ethic? Where will it lead? I hope that I answered on these two questions above. There is no future of company without ethically dealing with customers. We cannot do without ethics in the collective ( as we saw above ) , otherwise we will have the same situation as in the example. Ethics is obligatory element of each company. Colleagues should respect each other; there must be harmony and understanding, and also mutual support of each other. I know that there are a lot of things that depend on mood and behavior of workers. I’m sure that clients are feeling it.
Second story is about International Tourist Agency of my mom. She opened her agency in 2007. Through trial and error, she understood what was necessary for own tourist agency and opened it. Not to say that it was difficult, to say nothing. And my mom is not an exception.
She took all permanent clients to her agency. These clients had understood that she was a reliable and responsible travel agent who can propose you good rest with comfortable conditions.
She had always used ethics in dealing with clients. My mother immediately informed customers that the order of the tour in her agency would be more expensive than in others because she guaranteed the premium holiday. She was available to her clients 24 hours a day. Any problems or questions could be resolved on the spot as soon as possible. Many people are simply inspired by her honesty and straightforwardness. She communicated with clients as with friends. She was interested in their affairs, knew about the family, some problems at the job. That is, they came to the agency not only to choose the hotel and get away, they came to visit a friend who always listened and prompted what to do. Also, these relationships allowed travelers to be aware of the "closed to the public" cases that passed in the tourist business. If there were some news about these or other places / hotels, mom had always informed tourists. Full trust. Such relationships resulted to the fact that when my mother had health problems, her customers fully supported her as best they could. When money problems = rescued. The relationship is completely based on trust and sincerity strong as a rock. It's been many years, but my mother had all the same customers. Because she did not change the level of her agency, she was for consistency. Her customers have always known that they would find in the office.
Also there was a story about partner from Turkey who had finance problems. When he felt that he was on the verge of bankruptcy, he apologized to my mother and told that everything was over. My mom was really appreciated to him, because she did not lose money and she understood that she had a reliable partner.
At the moment my mother still has a travel agency. She is trying to teach her workers to respect all clients, to be with them as a friend, that every client is equal; there is no rich or poor one. I’m sure that relationships in collective are directly bound with director. If director of company is interested in good work of his or her workers he / she will do everything to mend relations between them.
Now I want to do some kind of conclusion. I think that I had answered on all questions that we had at the beginning. We noticed some rules that we should stand by:
First of all: Honestly. Behaving honestly means that a business does not attempt to deceive others. This covers a lot of ground, from accounting fraud, to claiming that a product does something which it was never designed to do.
Hardly anyone would disagree that dealing with employees, customers, etc., honestly is required of an ethical company. But the number of times companies deal with others dishonestly is astonishing. For example:
Overpromising: Salespeople are notorious for promising customers the moon, and probably everyone has had the experience of buying something only to discover that it couldn't do what you wanted it to. Software is particularly bad in this regard, as companies often try to inflate feature lists by including things which don't work, or are so marginal as to be useless.
Secondly: Openly. Openness is a subset of honesty. It means that a business keep others informed about what it is doing and why. This does not mean giving away proprietary information, or tipping off competitors as to strategy, but simply letting others feel like they are in the loop.
Stated another way, behaving openly means not concealing information which someone might reasonably want to know, and which wouldn't harm the business to release. It also means not concealing information which might lead an employee, customer, community member, or shareholder to behave differently towards the company.
Some examples of information which is often inappropriately concealed: Known product defects; sudden adverse changes in the business environment; and the fact that different customers pay different prices (though it is reasonable to not release the exact prices others pay).
Thirdly: Consistently. Behaving consistently means not changing what a company does over time without reason. Inconsistency is often the result of a company not caring enough about a person or group of people to take the time to provide a measured response to some request or action on the part of an employee, customer, community member, or shareholder; and it sends a strong message of not caring to the person being dealt with inconsistently.
Fourthly: Fairly. Fairness is the flip side of consistency, and means treating all members of a group in the same way. Fairness does not mean that everyone gets identical treatment, but that when the treatment is different, it is for reasons which are the same for everyone.
In practice, fairness is hard to enforce. People are always trying to gain some unfair advantage, and some are more persistent about it than others. It is tempting to give in to the salesperson who demands to stay in a four-star hotel when everyone else is staying at the Rixos Premium, especially if the salesperson is a top performer.
When such favors are discovered by others, as they almost always are, it breeds considerable resentment among those who did not receive the special favors. In the long run, this is usually more damaging than holding one's ground against the requests for unfair treatment.
Consistency is important, though, because it helps people understand how a business will interact with them. Without consistency, a person doesn't know what to expect, or how to go about getting what he or she wants.
The last one: In the best interests of others.
Probably the hardest part of behaving ethically is working in the best interests of others. This means that an ethical business needs to actively promote the interests of its employees, customers, community, and shareholders. Merely not getting in the way is not enough. Exactly in Travel Agencies world.
This does not mean that an ethical business should liquidate its assets and give them all tours in Turkey or something like this. Everyone is nearly always better off when the company is operating successfully, generating jobs and economic value, and actively contributing to the vitality of the community.
What it does mean is that an ethical business should work to make its employees, customers, community, and shareholders prosper. This is also in the best interest of the company itself: remember that these are the groups which contribute to the company's success, and when they all prosper, the business will prosper, too.
The hard part comes in figuring out what actions are truly in the best interests of others (as opposed to short-term gain with long-term damage); and how to balance competing interests of different groups.
I hope that every company will use these ethics rules in dealing with clients. Because, we really need ethically dealing with customers.