Should we expect superior customer service from companies that have good corporate responsibility reputations? Not necessarily, if customer satisfaction surveys are any indication. Disturbingly, many companies that hog the limelight in corporate responsibility rankings and conferences are often at the wrong end of customer satisfaction indices.

Chandran Nair, a founder of Hong Kong-based thinktank the Global Institute for Tomorrow, and a regular contributor to Ethical Corporation, says: “There is no relationship between corporate responsibility and customer service, though many of us would like to think there is.”

He says the reason is that corporate responsibility is cosmetic and superficial in most companies, being a function run by public relations departments. “There is an industry of CR that has created a myth that corporate responsibility is at the core of company behaviour.”

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