Customer ethics checklist, from first line to sign-off

Twelve tests of how your organization actually treats customers, each answered from evidence rather than policy. Most need a record, a timing or a sample of real cases. None needs a values statement.

Run it on one product, honestly, before running it on all of them.

What to take away

The last time something changed

1. The last price rise. Find the notice that went to existing customers. Pass: it arrived before the new price took effect, with enough time to leave, stated the old and new price side by side, and said how to cancel. Fail: the new price appeared on the invoice, or the notice arrived after the renewal was processed, or the cancellation route was not mentioned. Where a sale is covered by the FTC's telemarketing sales rule, disclosure and authorisation of recurring charges are specified rather than left to judgment; most sales are not covered, which is why the judgment matters. A price rise communicated so that most people miss it is designed to be missed.

2. The last change to a default. Find the last time a setting, an add-on or a consent was changed from off to on, or from unticked to ticked, for existing customers. Pass: it was not done, or it was done with an explicit choice presented to each customer. Fail: it was done silently, and the change was justified internally as "most people want this". If most people wanted it, most people would have chosen it.

3. The last feature removed. Find the last time something customers were using was withdrawn or moved to a higher tier. Pass: affected customers were told in advance, in a message that named the feature, and were offered a route that did not cost more. Fail: they discovered it, or the message described the removal as an improvement.

The last time something went wrong

4. The last outage or defect that affected customers. Find when it began, when customers were told, and what they were told. Pass: customers were told before most of them noticed, in plain terms, with an honest estimate. Fail: the status page stayed green, or the message described a serious failure as "some users may experience degraded performance". Customers can handle bad news; they cannot handle discovering that you knew.

5. The last error in your favor. Find the last time a defect caused customers to be overcharged, or to receive less than they paid for. What did they get? Pass: every affected customer was identified and refunded in the form they paid, without having to ask. Fail: a credit against future purchases, a refund only for those who complained, or a fix with no refund. This item is the one that most reliably separates organizations; the pillar on customer ethics makes the point that behavior when there is nothing to gain reveals everything.

6. The last complaint that reached the top. Find a complaint that was escalated as far as it could go internally. Pass: the outcome changed at least once on the way up, which means someone was actually deciding, and the customer was told the final answer and the reason. Fail: every level confirmed the one below, or the customer was worn down rather than answered.

The routes

7. Cancel, timed. Cancel your own product on an ordinary account. Count the steps and the minutes, and count the same for joining. Pass: the same number or fewer, by the same channel. Fail: more steps, a different channel, a mandatory conversation, or a step whose only purpose is to make you reconsider. The pillar names this test; this checklist wants the numbers written down.

8. The complaint route at capacity. Take the last week in which complaints spiked. What happened to the median response time? Pass: it moved, but customers were told it had and were given an honest estimate. Fail: the route silently closed, messages went unanswered, or the automated reply promised a response that did not come. A complaint route is tested by volume, not by an ordinary Tuesday.

9. The route for someone who is not coping. Find the procedure for a support agent who realizes the customer is in distress, confused, or being spoken for by someone else. Pass: a named route exists, it does not end in a retention offer, and agents are not penalized for using it. Whether an agent will actually use it depends on what they have seen happen to colleagues who did, which is the subject of employee ethics. Fail: no route, or a route that nobody has used in a year. Financial, credit, insurance and health products carry specific legal duties here in many places; what those are is a question for counsel, and this test asks only whether a route exists.

The words

10. The claim and its limit. Take the product's main marketing claim. Find the limitation that would change a reasonable buyer's decision. Pass: the limitation sits beside the claim, on the same page or screen. Fail: it is in the terms, a footnote, or a page the buyer reaches after paying. The same reasoning drives the FTC's guidance on endorsements and testimonials: a disclosure that a reader does not encounter at the point of decision is not a disclosure.

11. The internal description. Write the internal description of the three practices that produce the most revenue per customer, in the words used in planning meetings. Pass: each could be read to a customer without editing. Fail: any of them relies on a phrase you would change first. This is the plain-words test applied to a specific list rather than in general, and the list is the point.

12. The data use nobody was asked about. Find the most recent new use of customer data that was not the use it was collected for. Pass: customers were asked, or the use was one a reasonable customer would expect and it was reviewed as such. Fail: it was approved on the basis that the terms technically permitted it. Data protection law differs by jurisdiction and governs much of this; whether it was permitted is counsel's question, and whether it was expected is yours.

Scoring

Item 5 is weighted. An organization that fails it has answered the question the other eleven are asking, and the fix is not a process change but a decision by whoever owns the margin.

Who runs it

Not the team measured on conversion or retention from the product. They will score honestly and the scores will still drift, because the items are ambiguous and each ambiguity resolves toward the number. Have someone from outside the revenue line run it, with the product team present to answer questions and not to score.

The wider principle, that a person whose result depends on the answer cannot be the one to give it, is set out in corporate responsibility. The tools that make the evidence for several of these items routine rather than a one-off exercise are covered in the site's article on customer ethics tools.

Then act on one item per quarter. Twelve fixes at once is a program; one fix, done, is a change, and it is the one the next customer notices. The shapes these trade-offs take when a customer's interest genuinely conflicts with another obligation are in ethical dilemmas.

Common questions

We do not have a record of when the last outage was communicated.

Then item 4 fails, and the first fix is to start keeping one: time detected, time communicated, words used. The record is cheap and the absence of one is itself the finding.

Is a goodwill credit ever acceptable in item 5?

As an addition to a refund, yes. As a substitute, no. A credit keeps the customer's money in your business; a refund returns it. The customer can tell the difference and so can anyone who reads about it.

How often should this be run?

Once a year on each product, and again after any incident that item 4 or 5 describes. The point is to check that what was fixed stayed fixed.