When Half - Truths Hurt Your Business Why transparency should always be a priority for companies and customers. Ah, the half - truth. Defined as “a statement that conveys only part of the truth,” half - truths have been around forever, but it seems recently that they’ve become more prevalent. Part of this has to do with our current age of spin and the impact social media has on our society. Marketers, Salespeople, and Politicians always want to take a negative and “spin” it into a positive, and half - truths g ive them this opportunity. Even your everyday, ordinary person loves the half - truth because, if called out on it, they can always say they’re not lying. And that’s true — but they’re not disclosing the whole truth, either. Different Types of Half - Truths When it comes to business, oftentimes it’s the company itself engaging in half - truths. Some executives seem to let their Marketers and Salespeople do whatever they want, as long as they keep sales and profit up. Some half - truths may be relatively harmless, such as an ad touting a movie as “The #1 comedy in America!”... when it’s the only comedy currently in theaters and is in tenth place at the box office. The worst half - truths, such as a salesperson claiming a vehicle “is the safest car on the road” when tha t’s only because it’s new and there’s no data, could result in accidents or worse by giving the driver a false sense of security. Eventually, when too many half - truths are used to hook customers, people will catch on and they won’t hesitate to express thei r anger. These angry customers, known as detractors , can sink a company. They’ll switch to the competition, drive up costs through complaints, hurt employee morale, badmouth the company to friends and followers on social media, and possibly file a lawsuit — which can cost a fortune and attract a lot of bad press. On the flip side, sometimes consumer half - truths can wind up hurting a company. People ma y complain that their cell phone service is bad... but they’re out sailing a couple of hundred miles off the coast, well outside of any cell tower’s range. Or, they may say their food was cold... but they were outside when their plate arrived. The Fulfillment Lab Tackles the Issue of Half - Truths One company that has to sometimes defend itself against these types of half - truths is The Fulfillment Lab (TFL), a fulfillment company that helps ship e - commerc e orders to customers around the world. What makes TFL different from warehouses and other fulfillment centers is their dedication to “ fulfillment marketing .” The company k nows that the first experience an e - commerce company has with its customers is its shipping box and packaging; to improve the customer experience, TFL provides customized packaging to their clients, which helps them boost their brand recognition and streng then brand loyalty. What TFL doesn’t provide is the items inside the box. “Our customer service reps receive calls that we’ve sold people a poor quality product,” at The Fulfillment Lab. “We’ve also seen online reviews from people unhappy about their item, or that it wasn’t what they expected. It’s up to us to then remind them that we are not the manufacturer of these products, simply the middle man, providing shipping and fulfillment marketing services.” Indeed, a look at The Fulfillment Lab’s website conf irms that they are not making products. Rather, TFL houses them for e - commerce businesses and packages and ships these products when orders come in. So, when a customer complains that they received a bad product from TFL, the statement is only half true; t hey may very well have received a product that they’re unhappy with, but TFL did not make the product; they simply packed and shipped it on behalf of the manufacturer. “We want to take care of the customer.” “If there’s an issue with shipping, we’ll handle it immediately, that’s what we do. When it’s a product issue, we have to direct them back to the manufacturer.” Usually, this is simply an honest mistake on the customer’s part. They see that an item was shipped by a company (TFL in this case), and assume that the shipment service provider is also the company selling the product. Eliminating Half - Truths in Business Half - truths may seem harmless at first, but they can jeopardize both companies and customers. Some would argue that a half - truth is even worse than a lie. Whereas a lie can usually be flat - out refuted, often with evidence, half - truths contain elements of reality that complicate refutation and ultimately confuse people. Luckily for The Fulfillment Lab, they are able to easily explain that they are not manufacturers, but simply a marketing fulfillment company; for other businesses, half - truths can be a lot more hurtful. While it may seem like a pipe dream in this day and age, half - truths can , hopefully, be eliminated or at least reduced in time, esp ecially when people become aware of the chaos they can cause. In the end, the only way to prevent them is for companies to promote complete transparency from within — and hope that customers do the same when doing business with them.