THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF FIRMS TO CUSTOMERS

The word stakeholder is a household term in business. Stakeholders are those who impact or are impacted by an organization’s product or services. Common examples of stakeholders in a firm or an organization include investors, suppliers, government, customers, community, and employees. Out of these stakeholders, customer is one of the firm’s key stakeholders. They are regarded as firm’s major stakeholders because they are the stakeholders who decide whether a firm’s business will be successful or not. Given the important place that customers hold in firms and organization, in this blog post, we shall explore the responsibility of firms to customers.

To begin with, customers are human beings and human beings have intrinsic dignity and value. As a result, firm owes their customers the responsibilities of good service and treatment. When we speak about service to customers, we mean that organizations should provide their customers with all they want and try as much as possible to meet their expectations. Service to customer is about customer satisfaction. Another responsibility which firms owe their customers is that they have to offer their customers consistent levels of service.

Business ethics mentions two approaches to serving customers. These approaches are very contrasting. The first is the service approach or paradigm while the second is warfare approach or paradigm. The service approach focuses on the customers, emphasizes providing value to the customer, and creates a win-win situation. The warfare approach on the other hand focuses on the bottom-line, that is, profit maximization, and on extracting value. One problem with warfare approach is that firms that practice such an approach tend to make profit off the customers. In other words, they insist on making profit even if it means using the customers as a means to an end.

Furthermore, firms owe their customers the responsibility of ensuring that its products do not endanger the health of their customers. To do this, firms must ensure that its product are safe to use and the products contents must also be disclosed. When businesses write the ingredients or contents with which a certain product is produced, the intention is to alert the targeted audience. Also, firms owe their customer the duty of disclosing the harmful side effects of using a certain product, and avoid misleading or manipulating customers through their actions or communications. One way in which firms fail in this responsibility is through product advertisement. Firms often focus on the good side of their products while neglecting the bad side of the products. At the end of the day, customers are misled into buying a product that may be harmful to their well-being. This is against ethics.

Lastly, in addition to providing values for the products that their customers buy, firms also have the responsibility of ensuring that customers receive on time, the products or services they paid for. In Nigeria, artisans are the major defaulters in this responsibility. Tailors especially must know that when they fail to deliver a customer’s clothes as and when due, they are failing in their responsibility towards their customers. Nobody likes to go to a place where they are not valued. As such, the way we treat our customers will affect the number of customers who will be patronizing our firms.

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