The Book of Business Etiquette | Page 8

but it is no use. The
little words of love and the little deeds of kindness go often without
recompense so far as we can see, except that they happify the world,
but that in itself is no small return.
Courtesy pays in dollars and cents but its value goes far beyond that. It
is the chief element in building good will--we are speaking now of
courtesy as an outgrowth of character--and good will is to a firm what
honor is to a man. He can lose everything else but so long as he keeps
his honor he has something to build with. In the same way a business
can lose all its material assets and can replace them with insurance
money or something else, but if it loses its good will it will find in
ninety cases out of a hundred that it is gone forever and that the
business itself has become so weakened that there is nothing left but to
reorganize it completely and blot out the old institution altogether.
One must not make the mistake of believing that good will can be built
on courtesy alone. Courtesy must be backed up by something more
solid. An excellent comparison to show the relation that good manners

bear to uprightness and integrity of character was drawn a number of
years ago by a famous Italian prelate. We shall paraphrase the quaint
English of the original translator. "Just as men do commonly fear beasts
that are cruel and wild," he says, "and have no manner of fear of little
ones such as gnats and flies, and yet because of the continual nuisance
which they find them, complain more of these than they do of the other:
so most men hate the unmannerly and untaught as much as they do the
wicked, and more. There is no doubt that he who wishes to live, not in
solitary and desert places, like a hermit, but in fellowship with men,
and in populous cities, will find it a very necessary thing, to have skill
to put himself forth comely and seemly in his fashions, gestures, and
manners: the lack of which do make other virtues lame."
Granting dependability of character, courtesy is the next finest business
builder an organization can have. One of the largest trust companies in
the world was built up on this hypothesis. A good many years ago the
man who is responsible for its growth was cashier in a "busted" bank in
a small city. The situation was a desperate one, for the bank could not
do anything more for its customers than it was already doing. It could
not give them more interest on their money and most of its other
functions were mechanical. The young cashier began to wonder why
people went to one bank in preference to another and in his own mind
drew a comparison between the banking and the clothing business. He
always went to the haberdasher who treated him best. Other men he
knew did the same thing. Would not the same principle work in a bank?
Would not people come to the place which gave them the best service?
He decided to try it. Not only would they give efficient service, they
would give it pleasantly. It was their last card but it was a trump. It won.
The bank began to prosper. People who were annoyed by rude, brusque,
or indifferent treatment in other banks came to this one. The cashier
was raised to a position of importance and in an incredibly short time
was made president of a trust company in New York. He carried with
him exactly the same principle that had worked so well in the little
bank and the result in the big one was exactly the same.
In a leaflet which is in circulation among the employees at this
institution there are these paragraphs:

We ask you to remember:
That our customers can get along without us.
(There are in Greater New York nearly one hundred banks and trust
companies, every one of them actively seeking business.)
We cannot get along without our customers.
A connection which, perhaps, it has taken us several months to
establish, can be terminated by one careless or discourteous act.
Our customers are asked to maintain balances of certain proportions. If
they wish to borrow money, they must deposit collateral. They must
repay loans when they mature; or arrange for their extension.
If a bank errs, it must err on the side of safety, for the money it loans is
not its own money but the money of its depositors. We (and every other
bank and trust company) operate almost entirely on money which our
customers have deposited with us. The least we can do, then, is to serve
them courteously. They