What we've learned.

The World’s Oldest Customer Complaint

Branding, Customers, Employees, Trust, Values / By /

Archeologist Sir Leonard Woolley, during his  excavation in Ur in the 1920’s and 1930’s, discovered what is thought to be the oldest customer complaint in the form of a cuneiform-inscribed tablet dating to 1750 BC.The tablet, translated, revealed that a customer named Nanni wrote to a copper merchant named Ea-nasir that he felt the copper supplied him was inferior. Interestingly, Nanni added to his complaint that he felt that by offering him the inferior product, the Ea-nasir had disrespected him.

 
Nearly 4000 years later, The Good People Research Company, on behalf of the Better Business Bureau, looked into why consumers trust some organizations and not others. We found that trust turned on the level of respect the organization displayed for customers in general; the more an organization showed respect to the customer, the more the customer trusted the organization, the less respect, the less the customer trusted.
 

Organizations show respect to customers through what we eventually determined were 5 Gestures: beinghonest, transparent, proactive, humble, and equitable.

 

We called these the “5 Gestures of Trust.”

 

Apparently, respect as the key to the relationship an organization has with its customers, and employees for that matter, is as old as commerce itself. Next time you receive a complaint, look under the hood to see what’s really behind it. You may be surprised to learn that it may start with respect.

 

Be respectful.