A customer is defined as “the recipient of a…service, product, or idea, obtained from a…supplier for a monetary or other valuable consideration.” So that makes the participant, learner, or student who populates your learning experiences your customer. The “valuable consideration” might be their time (and catch-up after being out), but they come to you for an idea and the service of learning. And customers require ethical dealings.
This means trainers must be clean in their learner dealings, not false, manipulative, or greedy. They must keep even the smallest promise made (such as what time the class will end) or risk appearing deceptive and unreliable. They must be honest and ensure their actions are congruent with the messages they are sending in a learning experience. They must never rob the property of others (such as copyrighted material) while implying it is their own. They must refrain from coveting their learners’ talents or falsifying their own. And they must honor the learner just as they honor the process of learning.
The trust of a customer (a.k.a., learner) starts with the trustworthiness of the service provider (a.k.a., trainer). Trust is as vital to acquiring competence as it is to buying goods and services.
