Putting Customers first – a lesson from Sir John Harvey Jones

You will no doubt be familiar with Sir John Harvey Jones and his reputation as a respected businessman and advisor. Sir John had an elegant secret for deflecting customer interruptions – whilst still making the customers feel as though they were the most important people in the world!

When Sir John was Chairman of ICI and a customer rang to speak to him, his secretary would explain that, although Sir John was doing something else, he had left strict instructions that, wherever he was, he was to be interrupted if a customer wanted him. Most customers would say: “Don’t bother him now. But ask him to call me when he’s finished.” As a result, Sir John was rarely interrupted, and goodwill was always at an optimum. What’s more, his example helped to convince everybody else at ICI that they too needed to live up to the rhetoric of putting customers first.

It really pays to make other people in your life feel respected and important.

How could you apply this to your own business, or your life in general?