Every doctrine has to start somewhere. Even this one.
Want to boost your repeat business, get tons of free referrals, acquire bunches of new customers and get lots of positive buzz for free? There’s a pretty simple way to do it that doesn’t have to cost you a whole lot. Can you guess what it is?
Simple: Purge your company of assholes.
In fact, let me share item #1 in my Better Business Doctrine with you real quick. Are you ready? Here we go:
The customer-facing organization with the fewest assholes wins.
That’s it.
A simple example, from the friendly skies.
Does this seem like common sense? Of course it does. And yet here we are, routinely forced to endure a passive-aggressive or plain argumentative jerks who would rather exercise their “authority” than provide customers – even stressed out customers – with pleasant experiences. Why is that? Let me answer that question: Because companies are still hiring assholes.
Let me give you a few personal examples:
1a. The Continental flight I was on a few months ago
Flight Attendant (sternly) to a passenger in the process of turning off their iPad, just not quickly enough: “SIR! I need you to turn that off right now!” (Stares angrily at passenger until the device is turned off, and walks away, visibly annoyed.)
This probably happens to flight crews 20+ times per day. Every time a plane pushes off from the gate and prepares its approach, passengers in the middle of a song, of a paragraph, of a game of Angry Birds or Brick Breaker take an extra 10-30 seconds to “comply” with the “please turn off your electronic devices at this time” announcement on the PA. I get it. It probably gets annoying after a while. But guess what: You’re a flight attendant. Asking people to turn off their electronic toys comes with the job. You don’t have to be an asshole about it. Case in point:
1b: The Delta flight I was on the following day
– Flight Attendant (with a smile, jokingly) to a passenger so absorbed by what he was reading that he missed the “turn off your electronic devices” announcement and kept his Kindle going: “Good book?”
– Passenger, sensing that he was the object of the flight attendant’s attention, looks up from his device: “I’m sorry?”
– Flight Attendant, nonchalantly points at the Kindle: “Good reading?”
– Passenger, smiling back: “Yeah. Very!” (Gets it. Laughs. Starts to look for the “off” button.)
– Flight attendant: “You can turn it back on as soon as we’re on the ground.” (Walks away. Stops. Turns around.) “The book. What is it?”
Passenger answers. Flight attendant repeats the title as if to remember it, nods as if interested, and returns to his station.
The difference between the two isn’t training or pay. It isn’t corporate policy or procedure. It isn’t even company culture. The difference between the two occurrences is this:
One of these flight attendants, at some point during the course of her day, week, month, year or career, decided to let her asshole flag fly. The other one didn’t.
How every asshole on your payroll affects your brand equity and impacts your business on a daily basis.
The impact of just one asshole’s behavior in a customer-facing role doesn’t stop with the one customer they treat poorly. Ten rows of passengers witnessed the exchanges on both flights, and I can guarantee that the ten rows on the Continental flight (30 passengers) were not impressed, while those on the Delta flight surely were. The ramifications of this are simple:
Whatever shot Continental had at influencing these 30 people to develop a preference for flying its friendly skies, for being more loyal, for looking to book future flights with them first, just flew out the window, not because of price, not because of delays, not because the plane was dirty. The price was great. The plane left on time and was impeccable. Continental did everything right except one thing: Someone there allowed an asshole (and probably more than one) to take on a key customer service role. Delta, on the other hand, scored some points.
And just to be fair, I’ve run into my fair of assholes working for Delta too. Few domestic US airlines seem immune to this phenomenon these days, except for perhaps Alaska Air, whose service and hiring practices, to my knowledge are still impeccable.
That said, my experience with Delta flight crews recently has been stellar, and not just because of this little anecdote. (Expect another post about what else happened very soon.) The difference between the two airlines for me was limited to my experience, as it is for all of us. Before the recommendations and the word-of-mouth and the marketing, our own experience shapes our bias.
Every positive experience creates positive associations with a brand, while every negative experience creates a negative association with a brand. More positive than negative = positive bias, preference, even loyalty. Consistent negative experiences (especially those that repeat themselves, like frequent delays, rude employees, apathetic managers, or being talked down to by an unprofessional asshole) = negative bias, preference for your competitors instead of you, and cynicism towards your brand.
The wheels of this mental equation – more emotional than empirical – start turning every time the thought of your brand comes up, and you need to understand it isn’t linear. The way we process the negative and the positive isn’t as balanced as you might think. For whatever reason, until you have grown into a loyal fan of the brand, the equation tends to be heavily weighed towards the negative: What you did right six months ago – or for the last thirty years,- doesn’t matter nearly as much as what you did wrong yesterday or just last week. That’s part 1 of how the mental math of brand experiences work. Part 2 is this: People will easily forgive incidents and accidents: Lost luggage, no available upgrades, long lines at the counter, mechanical problems, etc. Those things are out of your control, and once the anger and frustration subside, they’ll get it. Those negative impressions will evaporate. But one thing customers won’t forgive of any company: Being deliberately treated badly by an asshole.
Just as being an asshole is a choice, – especially when dealing with a customer – hiring an asshole and keeping them on staff is also a choice. Because of this immutable fact, every company bears its part of responsibility in the hiring and promoting of assholes. Customers instinctively understand this, which is why when they run into one of your company’s assholes, they don’t blame the asshole for treating them poorly, they blame you. They blame the brand. The negative association they take home with them isn’t with that person (whose name and face they will forget inside of a week), but with you. Your assholes are faceless. All customers remember is the context: You. Your company. Your brand. The asshole just goes on being an asshole day after day, happy to have a job that pays him – even rewards him – for being a complete raging asshole all day long.
At the end of their shift, what you have to understand is that assholes in your employ don’t lose customers. You do. You spend your resources bringing them to the cash register, and every asshole on your staff spends all day making sure they never come back.
For this reason if none other, choose and evaluate your employees carefully.
The real cost of letting assholes poison your brand from the inside.
If you are in business and have employees, let me be VERY clear about this: You are always only one asshole away from losing your best customer. The more assholes you have on staff, the faster and more often this will happen.
Not only that, but assholes tend to turn off, not only the one customer they happen to be unpleasant to, but everyone within earshot as well.
And today, ladies and gentlemen, “within earshot” isn’t just the ten rows on the plane or the ten people in the store waiting to check out. It is also potentially the hundreds of thousands of Facebook and Twitter users who might get a glimpse of that negative experience and be turned off in turn. Even millions, for that matter. (See previous 2 images, inspired by David Armano’s “Influence Ripples” theory (Edelman), below:)
Let me give this a financial angle for you: Over the course of a year, one asshole on your staff, just one, can invalidate every dime your company has spent on advertising, marketing and PR. That’s the real liability of assholes. For small businesses, an asshole might only cost you $10,000 in wasted marketing, messaging or brand positioning. If you’re a bigger company, the same asshole (or a whole army of them, which is more likely) could cost you hundreds of millions of dollars in wasted marketing and brand management dollars.
That was part 1 of that equation. Part 2 is measured in lost revenue from disappointed customers taking their business elsewhere (your competitors thank you), lost revenue from all of the net new customers delighted customers would have recommended you to (but didn’t, because your assholes chased them away), and so on.
As a result, the higher the proportion of assholes to caring professionals a company has on staff, the more likely it is to have to spend more and more on marketing (with increasingly diminishing returns), while customer retention falls flat and even starts to dip into the red. Assholes aren’t just bad for customer service or your brand’s image. Assholes are bad for business. They are a counter-current to your hopes and dreams. They are the cancer that first weighs you down, then eventually makes your brand begin to fail, then wither, then die.
So let me repeat today’s lesson: The customer-facing organization with the least amount of assholes wins.
Don’t believe me? Ask Zappos. If you have never heard of Zappos, they sell shoes on the internet. That’s it. Well… LOTS of shoes. So many in fact that Amazon bought them for a pretty penny. Not only that, but Amazon decided not to make any major changes to Zappos’ leadership or culture. They left Zappos alone because the model works well just as it is. What’s Zappos’ secret? The customer experiences they create are stellar. Why are they stellar? Because Zappos pretty much has a “no asshole on staff” policy. Their hiring practices focus on this, and for good reason: They know that a happy customer is a loyal customer.
The simple truth (and we all know this) is that happy customers are good for business. In fact, no. They are GREAT for business: The happier a customer is, the more likely it is that they will come back, spend more, spend more often, and recommend you to all their friends. This is what you want. This is what makes businesses insanely successful. This. You don’t have to invent the iPad to be a huge success. Zappos just sells shoes on the internet. Virgin Airlines just flies people from airport to airport. Intercontinental Hotels (disclosure: client) are basically just… hotels. We’re not talking space walks or time travel, here. Your favorite restaurant, your favorite coffee shop, your favorite mechanic, none of them necessarily reinvented the wheel, right? They didn’t win a Nobel prize for revolutionizing their industries. No. What they did was this: They figured out that a happy customer is good for business, so they focused on that. They earned your trust, your respect and your loyalty. Want to know how they did that? By giving you theirs.
Let me let you in on a little secret: An asshole doesn’t think that way. An asshole doesn’t think about happy customers. He doesn’t care about happy customers. An asshole only thinks about himself: His own mood, his own frustrations, his own personal dramas, his own power trips. An asshole doesn’t give anyone their trust, respect or loyalty. Assholes just don’t think that way. And that is precisely the rub: No matter how well you pay them, you can’t make assholes give a shit. And that is bad for business. Very bad.
A fork in the road for every organization:
Do you know one way to make sure your customers are always happy? Only hire people who want your customers to be happy too. People who want to be helpful, who want to fix problems, who take pride in making someone’s day better instead of worse. People who genuinely want to see the company do well. People with pride and self respect and ambition beyond their own bank account or advancement. Do you think this is too hard? It isn’t. Just hire better.
Want to guess how to guarantee that your customers will not be happy? Hire assholes to take care of them. (It works every time.)
That’s your choice: Door A or Door B.
Door A: Hire super nice, helpful people and your business will soar.
Door B: Hire assholes, and your business will forever struggle to stay afloat.
Every time you run into one of your employees (or candidates) and he or she acts like an asshole, I want you to think about that. I want you to think about how much harder you want to have to work to make your business successful once they start pissing off every customer and client they come in contact with.
Taking a step back so you can see your entire business now, how many assholes do you really want on your payroll, and how many customers do you want to put them in front of? Pull out a piece of paper and write down a number. Do it. Write it down. How many assholes do you want on your payroll?
Next to that number, write down how many assholes you have on your payroll now. Go through your mental org chart, and start counting them in your head. When you’re done, write down how many assholes you know are in your company right now. If that number is higher than the first number you wrote down, you have some cleaning up to do.
In closing, let me leave you with the top 5 ways to make sure that your company starts becoming asshole-proof.
Top 5 ways of asshole-proofing your company:
1. Don’t hire assholes. They are bad for business, and they breed inside organizations like weeds.
2. Don’t promote assholes. The only thing worse than an asshole is an asshole with authority (including the authority to hire and promote assholes when you aren’t paying attention).
3. Give your current assholes the “opportunity” to go work for your fiercest competitor. Do this immediately. Make sure the door doesn’t hit them in the ass on their way out.
4. Once removed, replace your former assholes with nice, smart friendly people. (They’re out there and they want to work for you, but your assholes probably already turned them down. Go find them and invite them back.)
5. Reward all of your employees for NOT being assholes.
That just about takes care of it for today. Any questions?
Inspired (in a good way) by conversations with Julien Smith, Geoff Livingston, Keith Burtis, Chris Brogan, Kristi Colvin, Tyler Durden, Jeffrey Jacobs, Peter Shankman, among others.
* * *
And in case you haven’t picked one up yet (or your favorite client seems to be having trouble figuring out how to bring social media into their organization), you can pick up a fresh copy of Social Media ROI at fine book stores everywhere. If you have sworn off paper, you can also download it for iPad, Kindle, Nook or other e-formats at www.smroi.net.
Tip: Leave it sitting conspicuously on your desk when your boss does his rounds. It seems to be a good conversation starter.
(Click here for details, or to sample a free chapter.)
Brand Building and Online Marketing Blog 
@Olivier good morning. LOL. great post. if you do turn your infographic into a tee shirt – I’m BUYING!
😀 Good idea!
Love the Tshirt idea!
cant wait for the asshole effect shirt 🙂
Beautiful, Oliver. Just beautiful. I think the description of the asshole as “cancer” cannot be overemphasized. One asshole can also turn other non-assholes into assholes, because they are trying to work with the asshole without going crazy, or cover their asshole, or what have you, and then the ripple effect or cancer spread just gets out of control. The sooner the original asshole is shown the door, the less damage will be done. Not that I have any personal experience with this matter ; ]
That’s so true.
One particular VP I worked with managed to turn perfectly normal people into assholes at work. Why? She rewarded the behavior. If you wanted to keep your job, you had to play her little games. She actually encouraged her staff to be rude to other teams and to snitch each other out. It was by far the most unhealthy, dysfunctional work environment I have ever run into. Half of her staff developed stress-related illnesses. Two had nervous breakdowns while I was engaged with the company.
Another VP (same company) made his people so miserable that they couldn’t help but be assholes. To each other, to people in other departments, even to customers. The stress just dragged them down.
These two managers infected close to a hundred people inside the organization. It was awful. Their best people quit and went to work for the company’s competitors. To add insult to injury, their departments didn’t grow at the same rate as similar groups at other companies in the industry.
So let’s recap:
They killed morale inside the company.
They poisoned customer service.
They hindered collaboration across departments.
They systematically pushed out some of the company’s best talent.
They made the company less attractive to new talent.
They hindered productivity.
They made the company less competitive.
Not exactly a recipe for success, is it. People like that either need to be better managed or moved to roles where they cannot negatively impact the company. (Or fired if that becomes necessary.)
I had read your previous post on the flight attendant example months ago. I could not agree more that having people how piss off your customers is not only extremely detrimental but like you said it can cost companies large quantities of money over time.
Looking back I do business with the ones that have the least assholes or zero assholes. The businesses I don’t want to spend money with are those that have assholes and even when you as a customer point them out they clearly don’t care.
Awesome post will make many think!
I hope so. 😀
Great post that gets to the core of the problem facing hiring and line managers. I’m convinced that some of these companies simply don’t care as long as they can make this quarter’s numbers. If the brand suffers long-term damage, that will be the next guy’s problem.
That’s absolutely right. My response to Sue (above) references a company whose entire culture was numbers-based.
Now don’t get me wrong: Numbers are why the companies are there to begin with. Stock-holders want their investment rewarded ever quarter, and fast growth is pretty crucial there. BUT, companies like the one I mention aren’t playing the long game. They’re stuck in a short-game: Managers are only interested in meeting their monthly numbers because that’s how they make their bonus. If they consistently make their bonus, they get promoted. That’s the carrot.
The broader ripples, however:
Employee burnout, dissatisfied customers, having to work consistently harder (expend more resources) in order to achieve the same results.
It simply isn’t sustainable. Sooner or later, that engine is going to burn out.
Kick-ass post and excellent observation as most people will agree – however following the logic, most airlines would be out of business it seems. The good/bad ratio is either higher or, in industries where people only shop price, the A-factor is not relevant. If it were, airlines like EasyJet here in Europe, for example, would have gone bye bye a long long time ago and yet…they persist. Go figure…
Well… a) we still have to fly and b) we have been slowly conditioned, over time, to accept poor service from airlines. It didn’t happen overnight.
Its a flight attendant! Ass kissing only happens on commercials and in sales meetings. Not in unionized industries or forward facing services. People don’t get paid enough to be nice. If everybody was happy, there would be no assholes.
Nice ideology though. Human resources will definitely weed out the assholes from now on! In between the time they spend double checking those credentials, previous work experiences, and criminal records.
To be honest… I like assholes. The world is pretty much full of them, best get used to it now.
Great post. Is there a “The Dumbass Effect” in the worx too?
If it’s not in the worx…it should be 🙂
You know… I’ll start putting one together.
Great stuff as always.
Olivier – how do you write this post without pointing to the best book on the subject….The No Asshole Rule by Bob Sutton? 🙂
Hello Olivier: I have called them “cubicle tyrants” for some time. I think I have stolen the term from Tom Peters though. Are these the “Cons” (french version) you spoke of? 🙂 Marie
Great post. I was on a flight recently where the employee was barking “all electronics off! We’ve asked you four times!!” Then yelled at the guy beside me. He also forgot to do up his seatbealt. She looked at him and told him to buckle it and then asked “are we having trouble listening today sir?” And stood there waiting for a response. Sad.
Wow. That’s terrible.
Great post and great examples! – from a former flight attendant
Thank you. 🙂 Why former?
Well said. I think I’ll “accidentally” send this to a few executives I know who could use the nudge.
😀 I like your style, Greg.
This is by far the best post on Customer Service that I’ve ever read. Thank you for getting straight to the point.
Sweet! Thank you. 🙂
Spot on! But I don’t think you know someone is an a*hole when you hire them. And unfortunately they can do a lot of rippling damage before their impact is brought to the attention of someone that can do something about it.
Imho, if getting people to ‘turn off devices’ is such an issue, (in this case) then why not come up with an alternate (more creative?) solution, cuz what you’re doing clearly isn’t working anymore.
As a consumer or as a service provider – you can be an a$$ or you can be an angel everyday. Your choice!
Yeah… An asshole radar would be nice.
I don’t know though… I’ve interviewed hundreds of people and I can usually spot warning signs. 20 minutes with somebody, and even if they put on a good show, the asshole will usually come out. You just have to know what to look for.
And maybe it takes one to know one. 😉
Olivier, you nailed it once again. Reading this gives me a sort of catharsis from every bad customer service experience I’ve ever had. What I can’t quite wrap my mind around is why companies don’t use this very logic (and common sense, really) when hiring– and firing.
Lazy management and/or absence of leadership when it comes to creating the right type of environment and promoting specific behaviors.
You wrote about the importance of being nice. However, I believe that being respectful is far more important than being nice. Your article is an example of this. You treated your readers with great respect, but you certainly weren’t “nice”.
Good point. 😀
This inappropriate behavior has become de rigueur these days – from fast food – where you are shocked by pleasant interactions – to high end retail and especially corporate America – where it IS all about the bottom line. Little else matters in publicly-traded companies and those who get it and celebrate non-assholism should and, mostly do, prosper.
Regrettably – some of this dreadful behavior and the ensuing experiences are all but condoned by an American business climate that all but lauds aggression and greed over civility and shared success.
SO – remember – if someone’s actually nice, pleasant or helpful – tell them. If you work (as I have) in an environment full of the behavior outlined in your post – get out before you succumb.
Great advice. I started doing that a while back, and it always seems to make people’s day when you make a point to thank them for being awesome.
Thank you for that! Half the problem is that assholes think it’s cool to not care what anyone thinks about them – and the other half of the problem is that somehow they convince others around them that they’re cool because they “tell it like it is”. Which of course leads to a larger problem: Customers won’t put up with that sh*#!
I agree with you completely – no company should employ (let alone reward) assholes…not if they want to stay in business anyway.
It’s a fine balance between being harsh but cool, and just an asshole. Clint Eastwood tells it like it is without being an asshole. There’s something to that. 😀
Good point, thanks.
Very good, but get your English straight: The customer-facing organization with the fewest amount of assholes wins. (“Least” sounds painfully ignorant to anyone with an ear.)
I’ll correct that right away.
Great post. That tshirt is a good idea. I also can’t stand it when the asshole is the owner, though same result: they loose my business.
Yep. The worst thing that can happen to a company is an asshole at the very top.
Great post. What happens if the asshole is the one running the company?
Then everyone is screwed. UNLESS, in those rare occasions, that CEO is also a genius.
You often hear stories about Walt Disney being a tyrant and an asshole, and yet Disney soared under his care. Similar things have been said of Steve Jobs, and yet, the results are undeniable. So an asshole CAN, under certain circumstances, create amazing companies in spite of that flaw. They are, however, the exception rather than the rule.
I think that the point is that every one of us can become an asshole sometimes… Maybe you slept bad last night, or just have argued with your couple, or have a headache… So it’s important to learn to control your responses towards your counterparts in every situation, so you can avoid your own “asshole moments”… The Continental attendant is an asshole or was just having an awful day? You will never know…
That’s right. Customers only get to see that one time. You could be great 364 days out of the year and have one bad day, and that day is what might cost the company customers. It is what it is.
Having said that, part of being professional deals with not letting a bad day affect your performance. Being in a crap mood is one thing. Deliberately ramming beverage trays into people’s elbows and feet or acting like a prison guard is the opposite of being professional.
As to internal roles (managers and such), their staff knows when they’re just having a bad day vs. being a horrible boss. So that kind of takes care of itself.
Thanks for the comment, Alex. 🙂
Brilliant! Love the name of the effect & completely true, at the end of the day the people are the brand & if they’re assholes that’s exactly what’s conveyed of the brand.
A company is a group of people. Who they are makes the company what it is, yeah.
Great article, again with concrete examples, to represent an ‘asshole’ in companies. I’m hoping that it’ll fall into the hands of the ones hiring this type of employee, because there are far too many right now on the loose pulling their disturbing pranks or putting inappropriate attitudes. It literally becomes pollution in the work environment but also a plague to the compagny’s image. I’m glad someone is writing about it to raise awareness. Unfortunately, not many get it yet. In French, we say, la ‘conscientisation’, which seems to have less value in our society these days…
except of course, for those on the ceo track
jobs would have been fired early on
This is incredible! It’s something that you would assume most people would know, and that companies would actively try to hire nicer people, but it’s never considered as a recruiting tactic to look for nice people. The rude ones seem more attractive for the job sometimes simply because of the high volume of “confidence” they exude.
Haha. Top 5 ways of asshole-proofing your company. Pretty sweet. I just finished Social Media ROI and I am definitely hanging on to it to loan out to the many people who still can’t grasp the idea of personal branding and social media. Great post!
Brilliant post!a very good information for the people. I recently read a great post by Andrew Hunt about how it’s not so much the medium it’s the message, Reality Check: It’s Not the Medium it’s the Message!, check it out (http://www.inboundsales.net/blog/bid/48062/Reality-Check-It-s-Not-the-Medium-it-s-the-Message).
Thanks for a great post.
Unfortunately, we don’t always have the ability to fire the bastard. Then it is even more important to work with the person, build a positive relationship with them (no matter how odious they may be), and show them how to a mensch even in the most difficult circumstances.
You have covered all the things in this post..:)
Great post. It always amazes me that great customer service and basic manners are not implicit for all staff within a company at all times and especially in this economy. As a marketer one of the most useful tools I found for truly understanding my customer was to spend some time working in customer service. I honestly believe that everyone in an organisation should do this to help keep the focus on the most important person to any organisation, the customer
In this country we admire companies that provide great customer service who have eliminated the jerks from their payrolls. But what I’m finding out by researching countries I would like to move to is that “Too bad, so sad” if you don’t like the internet service provider you have in your new country. If they are the only game in town, you are stuck with the jerks on the payroll.
This is a great great article. Would you mind if I adapted it to my own language (Portuguese) and posted it on my soon-to-be blog?
(I will obviously cite you and point the readers to this page).
Sure. Send me a link when it’s up.
thank you. I’ll send you a link within the next couple of days!
Being a solo practitioner in market research, I help my clients to get a handle on their customer satisfaction. And, they will LOVE this post. But, I also apply it another way – with my potential clients. If they’re assholes, I don’t work with them. Life is too short.