In business it is especially important that you are ethical in all of your words and actions. Many people behave unethically in ways that they believe will make them more money by doing things such as refusing to give refunds to people who truly deserve it. There are many other ways that people behave unethically in an attempt to make more money. What they don't realize is that in doing this they will not make more money. The truth is, when you behave unethically you don't just lose that customer, but everyone that that person speaks to about what you did, and everyone they tell and so on. It is ridiculous how fast bad news spreads about businesses who treat people like garbage.
For instance, if you notice on my blog I have two posts about companies that I do not believe you should support, Yahoo! and ArticleMarketer.com. Why? Because they treat their customers like garbage! They do not give good customer service, they do not try to help anyone. They just want to make the sales and forget about you. They don't realize that they lost potentially thousands of customers. ArticleMarketer.com ticked off Mike Geary, who has a list of thousands of people who he sent out the email to that I currently have posted on this blog. I posted it, and I know that many other people have passed the email on to their lists of thousands of people, and posted on their blogs and websites. This means that ArticleMarketer.com got to keep the subscription fee that they took from Mike, but they lost THOUSANDS of potential customers. Yahoo! only ticked off me, and I do not have a network of people nearly as large as Mike Geary, but I have still posted it and I have had over 500 people read that post, and if they don't appreciate what Yahoo! did to me, then they will discontinue their use of Yahoo!.
You see how many potential customers they have lost just so they could make a couple bucks? And Yahoo! didn't even make any money, they just couldn't be bothered to spend 10 minutes and help me figure out what was wrong.
On the flip side, I have seen companies where they offer great customer service, they treat their customers with respect, and they apologize if they mess up. This makes a HUGE difference in their business. Have you ever wondered how some tiny stores owned by one person can last for years and the person is living comfortably? It is often because they take great care of their customers and ensure that every customer leaves satisfied. They do what is best for their customers, not what is best for them.
Ethics are a big deal when you are in business. If you treat the wrong person like garbage, you can almost instantly lose thousands if not millions of customers, and depending on what you did you can end up in a lawsuit. However, if you go that extra mile for the right person, you instantly gain free advertising to thousands or millions of people, and your business will skyrocket!
Act ethically in everything you do. Always do what is best for others, not for yourself. You may lose a little bit of money in the short run, but in the long run it will not only gain you a lot of money, but also respect. And that respect is worth more than money.
