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Today I received a “Dear Barbara” email from the Marketing Manager of a company I have never heard of. The first sentence read “I know you have been anxiously waiting to see the full program for the (Blah Blah Blah University and Conference) and it’s finally here!

Nicole whoever you are, next time you think it’s okay to address me by my first name, and tell me that I have been anxiously awaiting your email when I have never heard of you or your company, remember that I have the power to put all future spam from your organization on “block”. That’s one great feature of the internet.

And may I humbly suggest that before your next email promotion, study the definitions of the words trust, authenticity and integrity.

Last weekend I blogged about a recent fender bender and the trustworthy behavior that was exhibited by all parties up to that point.

www.trustacrossamerica.com/blog/?p=172 Read First Blog

It’s now five days later and I am waiting for the insurance adjuster to examine the car. I have learned a few life lessons about auto insurance that I would like to pass along.

1. Auto insurers want to pay you the least possible, even if you had no fault or blame in the accident (as was the case here). One of the ways they do this (without necessarily telling you) is by slipping after market or reconditioned parts on your automobile. Don’t settle for this. It’s not trustworthy behavior.

2. Right now this accident is a third party claim, meaning that the guilty party’s insurance company is trying to settle directly with me instead of the claim being processed through my insurer. At first this sounds like a good idea. But here is the catch. Should I get “fed up” with how this third party insurer does business, and alternatively choose to put the claim through my own company, I must wait for my insurer to reclaim my deductible from the other party’s insurance company. And from what I’ve been told by my insurer, there is NO TIME LIMIT for repayment. In fact, I could wait for the $500.00 for years. Remember, the other party in this accident assumed full responsibility. Where is the consumer law that limits the amount of time one must wait to recover a deductible? Doesn’t seem like trustworthy behavior to me.

3. Finally, I’m going to let you in on a little secret that your insurance company hopes you never learn. It’s a two word term called “diminished value”. Diminished value is essentially the difference between what your automobile was worth before the accident and what it is worth after repairs. You know that online CARFAX report that shows up when you go to trade in or sell your car? Well, that little fender bender that was not my fault, may have devalued my low mileage, expensive SUV up to 20%, even if it is repaired back to its original state. Can a consumer collect for diminished value? Well, it depends where you live and who you ask. Am I eligible to collect? What do you think? Where’s the trust? Where’s the love?

Barbara: Tell us a bit about your background, qualifications and expertise. If you have written a book, please provide the title.

Jeffrey: For many years, I was an editor at Inc. magazine when it was still based in Boston. When I was executive editor, I noticed that a curious thing occurred with the letters we received from readers. Whenever we would run a story that highlighted how an entrepreneur had cut some corners or played fast and loose with the truth to get ahead, we would get letters from readers who objected to us featuring such behavior on our pages. We’d run some of those letters and then in the next issue we’d get letters from other readers who took those who had a problem with the practices we features to task and claimed it was how you had to behave to succeed and grow a company. We found something fascinating there and that led to my writing of several features that focused on ethical issues company owners faced.

Shortly after several of these features ran, I was offered a year-long fellowship at the Center for the Study of Values in Public Life at Harvard University. I had done my graduate work at Harvard Divinity School years earlier. I spent the year of my fellowship there running a seminar on ethical decision-making in business (largely attended by business and divinity students) and completing my book, The Good, the Bad, and Your Business: Choosing Right When Ethical Dilemmas Pull You Apart. As I began the fellowship in September 1998, I also started writing a monthly business ethics column called “The Right Thing” for The New York Times. A collection of those columns appeared in book form as The Right Thing: Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today’s Business. I have also written about a dozen other books on writing, marketing, banking, and other topics. In 2004, “The Right Thing” column became a weekly column syndicated by The New York Times Syndicate.

Barbara: Trust Across America’s mission is to rebuild trustworthy behavior in America, starting with public companies. Is ethical behavior a component of trustworthy behavior, or are they essentially the same?

Jeffrey: Trustworthy behavior can be one critical component of ethical decision making in business. But ethical decision making encompasses a broad range of elements that result in a final decision. Ethical decision making explores how someone walks through a tough decision. Trustworthiness can be an important character trait and certainly one that should be valued in business. But it in itself does not guarantee that someone will do the necessary work of making an ethical decision.

Barbara: Is the “trust” climate in corporate America improving or worsening? What actions will turn things around?

Jeffrey: Hard to say. There is a great deal of skepticism about honest behavior in business that heated up during many of the business scandals of 2002. The recent issues of safety with Toyota and oil spills with BP have not helped restore the public’s trust. The vast majority of business owners may indeed be trustworthy. But a handful of high profile cases of bad behavior can wreak havoc on public perception. When things go wrong, business leaders need to address issues head on if they expect to turn the situation around. They must come clean and make right what has gone wrong. Given that by the time things go wrong few can agree on what will make things right, this is no easy task.

Barbara: It seems that ethical corporate behavior has frequently taken second place to short term stockholder returns. Do you see companies shifting towards long termism and greater emphasis on all stakeholders?

Jeffrey: Such a shift will only be possible if stockholders don’t demand short-term rewards. Given the impatience of the markets, it’s hard to see how this will turn around fast. But boards should take the lead here and do what’s in the long-term interest of the company and all of its stakeholders…even if they know they might take a short-term hit.

Barbara: Please provide contact information.
The email for the column is rightthing@nytimes.com. My personal email is jseglin@post.harvard.edu.
Jeffrey L. Seglin
www.jeffreyseglin.com
jseglin@post.harvard.edu
rightthing@nytimes.com
617.824.8240 (Emerson)

Do you have any questions about this interview? Please don’t hesitate to ask.

Yesterday afternoon I was driving my kids to the dentist and got “rear-ended”. And while any accident is unfortunate, there were several components of trustworthy behavior (accountability, integrity, reputation, leadership, efficiency) exhibited during the critical minutes that followed the accident. And the best news is that nobody went to the hospital.

1. Within 30 seconds of the crash, a “Good Samaritan” (might have been a town public works employee) walked to the scene to ensure that we were all okay and see if he could help. I believe he was parked across the street.

2. The 911 operator had a police officer on the scene within 2 minutes.

3. The person who caused the accident did not try to bend the facts with me or the police. She was honest and took full responsibility. Kudos to a 23 year old who was willing to own up to her mistake.

4. The police officer was professional in his handling of the paper work and in taking time to explain what he was doing and providing post accident directions.

5. We were back on our way to the dentist within 20 minutes.

6. I was in contact with both insurance companies within 6 hours, and was assured that there would be no out of pocket costs on my part.

While nobody wants to be in a car accident, yesterday my faith in human nature got a very large boost. Trustworthy personal and professional behavior was exhibited by all parties involved. A very good outcome to a bad experience.

Now, if I could just figure out a way to bypass the wisdom teeth extraction!

This email exchange could be the “Poster Child” for how not to “do” customer service. Names have been deleted to protect the offender.

Me: Today I opened a box of (Name of Company) 12 Taco Shells. Much to my surprise, there were only 10 shells in the box. The UPC code is XXXXX XXXXXX. It seems like you have a quality control problem. My address is _____________ if you would like to send me the $2.39 that I paid for 12 taco shells.

The Company’s Response: Subject: RE: Taco shells

To ensure that our staff conducts itself in a manner that reflects the high regard that we have for our customers, we’ve notified the proper department of your complaint.

If you send the receipt or the proof of purchase with the attached Refund Request form, we will reimburse you for the objectionable product. In the meantime, I’m sending the enclosed coupons because we value your goodwill and would like to give you the opportunity to try our products again. If you have questions or comments in the future, please don’t hesitate to contact us.

We appreciate your time in bringing your concern to our attention and apologize for this problem.

Sincerely,

(Name of Company)
Customer Service Department

Me: Dear (Name of Company): There were no coupons attached to your email, only a refund form.

May I also suggest the following:

1.Change the word “complaint” to “inquiry”.
2.Change the word “objectionable” to “product in question”.
3.Do not make it difficult for customers who take the time to write to you to obtain coupons or refunds. A UPC code should be satisfactory.
4.Have an actual “person” sign your email responses.
5.Remember that without customers, you have no business 

This week Brian Moriarty spent some bringing me up to date about the work of the Business Roundtable Institute for Corporate Ethics and its role in fostering trustworthy behavior in corporate America. Please take the time to read this insightful and thought provoking interview.

Read Full Interview

This week Linda Locke from Reputare Consulting shared some thoughts and observations from the Reputation Institute’s Annual Conference in Rio. We thought our readers would be interested in Linda’s insights.

Notes from the Reputation Institute’s Annual International Conference on Corporate Reputation, Brand Identity and Competitiveness

Linda Locke
6.16.2010

Linda Locke is the principal of Reputare (rep-u-ta-re) Consulting, a corporate reputation consulting practice. She began the firm after a 14-year career at MasterCard International where she oversaw global reputation management as SVP and group head. She is a regular speaker on corporate reputation and recently spoke at the Reputation Institute’s 14th annual international conference on Corporate Reputation, Brand, Identity, and Competitiveness. Its theme was:
The Sustainability Imperative: A strategic role for reputation management.

Q. Why did you go to Rio?
A. I thought the theme was very timely given the current business environment. I think the notion of sustainability as a core organizing focus for rebuilding trust is a relevant one, but the definition varies widely.

Q. Do you think sustainability should be the key focus for a business wishing to rebuild trust?
A. Americans often define sustainability differently than other parts of the world. We tend to think of nature and the environment, whereas many others define it as connected to social justice. But as we coalesce around the idea of sustainability as a broader topic, I think it offers relevant framing for the intersection where what is good for business is also good for society. Outside the US, though, I think many people view the notion of sustainability as a challenge to free market capitalism.

Q. Give me an example of the definitions of sustainability
A. One speaker referred to sustainability as another name for democracy, and social and economic justice. One drew a venn diagram showing the intersection of humanism and capitalism.

Q. What are the implications of a sustainability strategy for a company wishing to build trust?
A. Charles Fombrun, the founder of RI, talked about how corporations wishing to build trust need to think about not what they want to say to the world but what the world wants to hear from us. Also a number of speakers talked about how making money is not an impediment to building trust – and the notion that stakeholders want companies to do both is a key issues.

Q. The Reputation Institute collects some interesting data on reputation and trust. Anything new at the conference?
A. For the first time RI created a global reputation Pulse report that identifies companies with the same global footprint, and then ranked the reputation of those companies. The study released showed that Google and Sony have the best reputations among the 25 or so companies rated.

Q. What are the obstacles to a company wishing to build trust?
A, One of the interesting ideas was from Professor Cees van Riel (Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University) who talked about the need to reduce fear. He called “corporate silence” an impediment as managers are often afraid they will lose face if they don’t know all the answers, and people lack courage to raise dissenting voices. Rebuilding trust will require companies to do the right thing, but also to do things right, according to Charles Fombrun, and that’s why internal alignment is a key issue.

Q. You have spent much of your career focused on financial services. That is an industry with severe trust issues. What do you think that industry needs to do to rebuild trust?

A. When I was in financial services I commissioned quite a bit of research on industry perception studies and what became clear in the US, and clear in many countries around the world is that banks should focus on two primary issues: ethics and fairness, as defined by the end users of banking services.

Linda Locke, Principal
Reputare Consulting
314.435.3428
linda.locke@reputareconsulting.com

Charles Green, founder of Trusted Advisor Associates issued a white paper yesterday summarizing the results of their Trust Quotient Quiz that has been taken by over 12000 people. It’s an interesting paper. Here are some of the highlights:

Women rated themselves as just slightly more trustworthy than men.

Higher scoring industries include medical care, retail, banking, real estate and consulting.

We tend not to trust those who seem erratic or inconsistent.

Skill mastery and knowledge don’t seem to help in building trust.

Trust CAN be taught.

Listening and empathizing are more important in building trust than an advanced degree.

For the complete white paper, click here: Read full paper

This week Leslie Gaines-Ross took some time out of her schedule as one of America’s leading corporate reputation strategists to shed some light on her professional activities and the steps CEO’s must take to ensure a solid reputation. Read Complete Interview

Leslie is the author of the following books:

This week I had the pleasure of interviewing Anna Bernasek, journalist and expert on integrity in business. Bernasek_Blogger_interview

Read Blog

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