Disloyal Bonding: The Hidden Costs of Strategic Deception in Business

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Have you ever wondered if offering a small favour to a customer could unravel an entire organization's integrity? Join Jeremy Blake and Bob Morrell as they illuminate the hidden world of disloyal bonding and strategic lies within contact centres and beyond. In this episode, inspired by their upcoming book "Whose Side Are You On? Disloyal Bonding and Strategic Lies," they uncover the ways employees create a false sense of camaraderie with customers through special treatment and discounts, often unknowingly undermining company policies. This unconscious behaviour erodes not just organizational culture but also the trust companies strive to build with their customers.

Listen as we delve into the high cost of deception in achieving conversion rates that seem too good to be true. Short-term gains for individuals come at the expense of long-term organisational viability and ethical values. Managers may miss these deceptive tactics in their quest to meet targets, while higher-level executives might exploit these skills for personal gain, only to leave the company grappling with the fallout. This conversation sets the stage for our next episode, where we will explore the strategic planning behind these deceptive practices. Don't miss this eye-opening discussion about integrity, trust, and the unseen impact of disloyal bonding.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:19):
Hello, I am Jeremy Blake and I am Bob Morrell.
You are listening to theauthors of a new book that is
coming out on the 1st of October.
What's the title?
Bobby?

Speaker 2 (00:31):
The book is called Whose Side Are you On Disslaw
Bonding and Strategic Lies?
This is a book that we havewritten based on our experience
of over 20 years training anddeveloping people in all sorts
of organizations, and thisconcept dislaw bonding and

(00:53):
strategic lies is something thatwe've picked up over that time
as a very endemic habit that isfound everywhere in all sorts of
organizations, so we thought itwas important to highlight it
and write a book about it, andthe title is just to remind you
Whose Side.

Speaker 1 (01:10):
Are you On?
We're making just a shortseries of these podcast episodes
to explain it.
In this first one, we just wantto get across what the concept
is, so it's very clear.
When you read this book, youknow what you're in for.
We're also going to talk aboutwhy it matters.
So this is really theintroductory episode.
So let's just have anexplanation, if we can.

(01:31):
Bob, whether you take thesecond part, not whose side are
you on, but what is this conceptof disloyal bonding?
Because that's what we'resaying in the title.
We're saying whose side are youon?
Question mark Disloyal bonding?
That's the.
Are you on question markdisloyal bonding?
That's the problem.
So what?

Speaker 2 (01:47):
is disloyal bonding.
Well, disloyal bonding is aterm that you came up with.
Thank you very much.
I don't know if you rememberthe actual day that you came up
with it, but you wrote it in ablog and if listeners want to
google the term disloyal bonding, they'll find that blog because
it was you who wrote it andthis is a quote from that blog.

(02:07):
You said if disloyal bondingexists in your organization,
then you need to get under theculture to find out why it is
there.
So let's explain a little bitabout what that actually is.
Many of us in life will have togo through the the task of
ringing a contact center fromtime to time, whether it be

(02:28):
insurance, energy, anything thatwe buy on a subscription.
We need to bring up thatcontact center and have a
conversation with them, and it'ssomething that most of us don't
relish.
We don't enjoy it, it's notsomething we look forward to,
and we'd like to get it overwith as quickly as possible, and
some of those transactions cango fairly well and be fairly

(02:49):
swift.
Some of them are long drawn outand painful, and this habit is
well exhibited in contactcenters, and it's where the
person you're speaking to triesto bond with you in a way which
is disloyal to their own companyand, in fact, does their own
company a disservice, whilstthey are metaphorically putting

(03:11):
their arms around you andpretending to be your friend
rhetorically putting their armsaround you and pretending to be
your friend.
So it might be, for example,when you hear somebody say oh,
you're unhappy with that costfor your car insurance.
Well, let me see what I can do.
So you can almost feel theirinvisible arm going around your
shoulder and taking you to oneside and saying I'm going to do

(03:32):
something special for you thatnobody else can do.
I'm going to give you a specialprice, a special discount, in a
way that is going to stick itto the company in a way that
they won't like, but nobody'sgoing to know because it's our
little secret.
So actually, what you're doingis lying.
You are pretending to thecustomer that this is something
you can do.
Of course you can do it.

(03:52):
You can do it for everyone, butyou pretend and you put on this
little false friendship actwhich is what it is, and you
pretend to be friends.
You offer them something whichperhaps you shouldn't be
offering, and the way it isexpressed is quite demoralizing,
because you're buying from anorganization who stand for

(04:13):
something, who are there to giveyou insurance which is going to
be very valuable if you have anaccident.
You're believing that whatyou're paying is valuable, that
it has a value.
The amount you're paying is theequivalent to the value of the
policy or whatever it is thatyou're buying.
But actually, what you'regetting is this idea of they
this invisible force at the topof the company don't know what

(04:34):
they're doing, they're sendingout these quotes and not
speaking to us, and they don'tknow what's going on for the
customers.
But I, I'm the one person thatyou've come through to, lucky
old you, who's going to be yourfriend for the duration of this
conversation and therefore makeyou feel happy.

Speaker 1 (04:49):
So that is what disloyal bonding is it could
extend into blaming things thatthe seller or customer service
person wishes they had morecontrol over the system is
letting me down, so it's lettingyou down, let's see what we can
do.
Oh, yeah, and if you were to putsort of a general banner over
this of sort of discountingmasquerading.

(05:11):
It may not even be a discount,it might be one of the levels of
banding that they even havediscretion over, but they're
leading you to believe that it'snot them, it's the organization
, and between you you'll come tosome form of resolution.
Now, this is just one, as Bob'sbrought to our attention, just
one area where it sits.

(05:32):
Because of the frequency, thefrequency of needing to book
various insurances or financialpolicies or subscriptions we're
dealing with contact centers ifwe don't take the straight
renewal we're offered.
So that's in the book quite alot, because that's a common
touch point that we'll allreceive.
Why do we need people tounderstand this?
Why does it matter?

(05:52):
Why do we need a book aboutthis?
Why do we need action to takeplace?
Can't we just let it pervade?
What?

Speaker 2 (05:57):
we found is that quite often it's completely
unconscious and unconsciouslyunrecognized, so managers don't
realize their people are doingthis or, if they do, they don't
mind, and the individual choosesto basically lie to the
customer in a disloyal way totheir company in order to get a
result, and the managers, by notdoing anything about it, are

(06:20):
effectively encouraging it.
Or and we'll come on to thisidea of the strategic lie what
they're doing is using thistactic to introduce an underhand
way to increase conversion forthe brand, in which case it
becomes a strategy.
Let's pretend to our customersthat this is the situation and

(06:41):
that will help us increaseconversion.
So it's either something that'sunconscious from the individual

(07:06):
going well, I'm going to usethis bull that I'm talking about
in order to get a sale, or it'sgoing to be the company saying
here is our policy use any andall means at your disposal to
get the conversion rate for ourorganization up by using these
tactics.
And that's why we thought we'vegot to talk about this, because
we're either victims of it orwe're perpetrators of it.
It's something that we are doingin our organizations now, and
there's a really big messagehere.
If you have an organizationthat is known for this sort of
tactic.
Give them a bell, give them apush, they'll give you a
discount.
Okay, we all know the sorts oforganizations we're talking
about.

(07:26):
That affects their reputation,it affects their profitability
and, in many cases, it affectstheir long-term viability,
because they're no longerselling their products or
services at a fair price with agood profit margin that allows
them to grow and develop andcontinue.

Speaker 1 (07:42):
They become a discount shop, which is
ultimately damaging anddestructive and over the what is
now 25 years of trainingsalespeople, we've often found
individuals who are not doingwhat Bob is saying.
It isn't unconscious, it'swholly conscious and they are
changing the organizations.

(08:02):
You can look at them onLinkedIn.
They go from B2B organizationto B2B organization where they
become an individual that claimsthey have more power over the
destiny of the customer and theygo this guy's amazing.

Speaker 2 (08:15):
He's doing so well.
He's selling all the time.
Now, what you don't realize isthat person is using lies and

(08:36):
disloyalty in order to get thatconversion rate, and what he's
actually doing, through his ownsuccess, is damaging the
long-term viability of yourorganization, and managers are
not picking up on it becausethey're being driven to hit
targets.
So that's what this book isabout.
It's about saying look, if youdo those sorts of things, if you
tell those lies, if youdemonstrate that disloyalty,
then whose side are you on?

(08:57):
Because you might be benefitingyourself, but you're not
benefiting the brand.

Speaker 1 (09:01):
You're not benefiting what we stand for, our values
and the fact that we actuallyhave a right to make a profit
from what we're doing, and inthe next episode we'll look how
even higher up people cotton onto the individual skill of
disloyal bonding and decide tomake it strategic for their own
benefit before they hop, skipand jump to the next company
three years later.
We're going to look at thestrategic aspect of planning the

(09:24):
lie.
Thanks for listening.