Serve Your Customers

It is one of the paradoxes of the Christian faith that our Savior Jesus, divine and all-powerful from eternity, came to this earth as a humble human being. He came not to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for us all. He demonstrated true leadership to his disciples on the night before he died by kneeling and washing their feet. He invited them to find satisfaction in that posture as they in turn served others. They discovered that he was right--joy comes from acting like Jesus.

A serving mentality is good for business. Customers will come back to a company that makes them feel important, listens to them carefully, takes their needs seriously, keeps its promises, admits and fixes its mistakes, and works hard to earn their trust and confidence. Among all his other daily activities, God watches business transactions carefully to see how we treat other people. “Shall I acquit a man with dishonest scales, with a bag of false weights?” (Micah 6:11).

If our Christian faith informs our sales practices, we would no more rip off a customer than our own mothers. Our company won’t try to sell people things they don’t need, won’t take advantage of unsophisticated buyers, won’t push damaged or flawed goods, and won’t bait and switch. Our company’s goal will be to make our customers’ lives better.

We succeed when they succeed.