How Would You Like a Business to Behave?

professorhojo asks: "These days on the 'net, it seems like a company can go from being regarded as a Good Citizen to Evildoer in a matter of hours (witness Yahoo!'s willingness to time and time again reinterpret their own privacy policy as it suits them and their advertisers). I am at the helm of a new software company and I want us to stand apart from the rest with rock solid ethics, and policies that put the user first, that won't change or waver at the behest of advertising money. What I want to know from you is simple:what are the essential things a company has to promise and stick to? More importantly, what things have companies done, which have made you do a double-take and totally reconsider doing business with them? Why am I asking this? Well, I believe that in the future, the ethics of a company will greatly impact on their bottom line. What's good for our customers is good for us, and customers will be drawn to us BECAUSE of it." It sounds good, but reality has a tendency of getting in the way of good ethics. What suggestions would you make to keep difficult choices from compromising the ethics you would like your company to embody?

Comments

Brutal Honesty

[JetScootr]

Especially in advertising. You know how a company will compare their product to their competitors? One example comes to mind: Medicine. Tylenol, for years, compared the effectiveness of extra-strength Tylenol to regular-strength aspirin. Do your comparisons honestly.
Itemized features? The kind that have a column for yours, and a column for theirs? Shock your potential customers by putting in a few of the features they have but you don't, and put a "NO" in your column and a "YES" in theirs. This kind of advertising would make me move the despisometer from zero to "surprising respect".
I've gotten to where I automatically reject as dishonest EVERY ad I see on TV or read anywhere.
Honest advertising that was obviously honest would be such a huge change from the norm that you would definitely stand out in a positive way. (Think "Miracle on 34th Street")

Re:Brutal Honesty

[grotgrot]

Check out what CodeWeavers post on their site. Read both The Real Dirt and their EULA. It makes quite clear what you get (tangible and intangible), how well the product works, and the EULA isn't even evil and even has some humor in it.

He Does

[Orien]

Just having that kind of a desire to be ethical is a step in the right direction. One thing to keep in mind is that when you are fixing bugs and implementing features it is plain as day to the customer weather your priority is yourself or your customer. A perfect example of this: We use an accounting package where I work that is licenced on a concurrent users model. We have run tight on our licences and people are regularly not able to log in. However getting another five seats is so expensive we can't get approval to buy more. We discovered that lots of people have the application open for long periods of time with out using it. Ever since we ran tight on licences we have been begging to have a feature in the software that will time out and log off a user if they are inactive for an hour or two. Is the company going to give us that feature? Of course not. There is no incentive because otherwise we will eventually have to break down and buy more licences. This leaves us feeling like we are being taken advantage of. We are loyal customers, we do beta testing for them, but they still pull this little stunt that makes them look money hungry. Just remember that your customers arn't all dumb, and your true priorities come through if you like it or not.