"The Customer is Always right" Does anybody still believe that?
Maybe you never believed it. I tried to.
Recently did a quick comp for a nice lady who now wants a re-do. She spelled her own name wrong. I did it just like she gave it to me. She signed off on the proof… Sent to print and when they arrive she calls to complain.
I was sympathetic, but her lack of attention does not warrant my extra expense. She definitely was not right.
This was my first complaint in a decade and it very much took me by surprise, causing me to revisit my personal credo of honesty, value, and complete fairness to the customer.
But I had to contrast the situation with a recent problem I had with AT&T shutting off my internet by mistake. Someone wrote up a work order for discontinued service when the bill was paid and I had done no such thing. They admitted their mistake yet wanted to charge me all the start up fees for a new account.
apparently they couldn’t turn the old one back on
I did not feel they were being honest, providing value, or being fair at all. 3 weeks of hassles was all I got out of it.
Is the customer always right or not? Who came up with that crap?
What’s your story?
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49 Answers
The ‘The customer is only right’ addage only applies to those customers that don’t abuse it.
Just because you’re the customer, therefore always right, doesn’t give you license to be impatient, rude, condecending, cheap or ignorant.
This fine company sums up the situation perfectly: thevortexbarandgrille.com
It’s not true, but sometimes you gotta act like it is.
I’ve always said that anybody who believes the customer is always right has never worked retail.
That reminds me of something that happened a few years ago at a tattoo parlor by my house in Chicago. Guy comes in, wants “Chi-Town” written on his arm or something. The artist comes up with a design: “Chi-Tonw”, shows it to the guy, the guy says it looks great, signs the documents required, tattoo artist puts the temporary transfer on the guy’s arm, makes the guy look at it again, finally starts to ink the thing onto the guy’s arm, and THEN the guy gets upset that it is misspelled. Give me a break.
In retail? Nah, that sucks.
In a corporate environment where you have clients and contacts? Absolutely.
@MacBean So true. I have only worked in retail once. It was my first job and on Christmas eve I was locking up the store since I was the only one with no kids that worked there and didn’t need to get home. Some guy wanted in to buy a last minute gift. We were closed so I tried to explain it to him. He screamed “Merry Fu _ _ ing Christmas to you bitch.” I hate retail.
When I work in customer service I certainly believe that. There are a couple circumstances though where people demand me to change something I cannot change. When that happens I say “I am simply the receptionist/clerk/whatever but I can let you speak to someone with more authority”. Hehe. and Yes I have worked retail, a pain in the butt is this addage but still served me quite well
As a customer I find people are very very rude. I don’t think they believe the customer is always right.
The fact is that the customer is not always right. But the saying prompts service workers to treat customers with respect, as if their business matters. Now in the days of corporations where they have tons of customers they seem to care less if the lose the business of one person.
I’m curious did AT&T eventually start you up without making you pay?
The phrase “The customer is always right…” made me realize when I worked at a print shop that the phrase was left unfinished. The rest of that phrase should read “out of his/her fucking mind!”
The number one rule in retail is this: Never, ever, ever, ever, let the idiots get you down! and while not all your customers are idiots, a fair share of them are. I used to ridicule the difficult customers after they left, that always made me feel pretty good.
I would love to erase the phrase “The customer is always right” from societal consciousness, and replace it with “A customer’s reasonable requests should be accomodated.”
It doesn’t imply license to treat staff like dirt, it doesn’t imply a need to grant unreasonable requests, etc.
My old employer ground into us that “customers are the lifeblood of any business.” I suppose it’s true, since without them, a business would fail. To keep them happy, we are behooved to treat them they way they want to be treated so that they keep coming back for more, providing us with jobs.
That said, some customers take this to the far extreme, knowing that businesses depend on them. If they’re having a bad day, they can come in and treat an employee like $hit and totally feel better about themselves on the way out. (Poop rolls downhill, as they say.) Employees are pretty much at their mercy. Do we have to treat them as if they were right even though they are often not? Yep. Does it make us forget about how they richly deserve a meeting with us and a baseball bat in the parking lot after we punch out? Ooooh, never.
I try to make up for it by being extra nice and super reasonable to employees wherever I go. I don’t have to be there, they do. If everyone did this, maybe employees really would treat ya well because they want to and you deserve it, rather than because they’ll get a write-up or disciplinary action if they don’t. Wouldn’t that be sweet?
I always thought that the situation was more accurately described as Caveat Emptor…
It all depends on how badly you need the customer if you are the proprietor or how badly you need the job if you are an employee.
Being a believer of the theme behind “a customer is always right” despite customer rudeness which never bothered me too much (okay there were some baseball bat circumstances but later I tell them in fun) I really hated working with coworkers who did not follow that attitude. I quit a job after a couple weeks working with this one woman. She would curse at customers at will. She was elderly and friends with the boss. It shocked the crap out of me and I really thought it was horrible to treat people that way, often they didn’t come close to deserving it. Yikes.
Of course the customer is not always right. I would say the opposite. It is just a business value to make sure to rake in the most $ – brown nose to ensure repeat business, good word of mouth, and so on.
it’s a bitter irony. unfortunately, the customer is always right… however… as we all know they are not always right, but for the sake of business and repeat business, they are always right ;)
I’ve had a few too many bad experiences with companies that argued with me when I felt I was most definitely in the right. So I believe that even if the customer is not 100% right, they should still be treated with respect and listened to. I hate feeling like my concerns are being overlooked or ignored.
@perplexxed82 In some cases you can change it. You just need to speak with someone higher up, be respectful, state your case, and hope they understand.
@perplexxed82 Yes. Or in rare cases, even above the manager. Depends how important the issue is.
the customer has never always been right. if they were businesses wouldn’t be able to survive, plain and simple.
I used to work in customer service, and the way some people would talk to me just amazed me. You’d think I’d personally caused their problems. Our phones had these cool “mute” buttons on them, so we could still hear the customers but they couldn’t hear us. Whenever one of us had some truly irritating person on the phone, we’d press mute and imitate them for the benefit of the other employees. Our supervisor had a great rule. She said, “The customer is always right, but if the customer becomes abusive or foul, you can hang up.”
Personally, I think the customer is always right, up to a certain point. If I’m the customer, in particular, I’m always right. Customers I’ve dealt with, or my husband has dealt with…well, they’re usually right in the sense that they have a problem it’s our responsibility to deal with. However, if you are just an asshole that is not a business problem and we can’t help you with that.
When I worked at starbucks the customer was always right. I didn’t get why, until I saw the numbers related to customer retention- turns out the people that come in more than twice a week also tend to spend twice as much every visit.
Piss those people off, and there goes the business…
@laureth I try to make up for it by being extra nice and super reasonable to employees wherever I go. I couldn’t have said it better myself.
This has always been my philosophy, too. If you are having problems at a place, don’t abuse the hired help; that’s what the managers are for. =) I’ve come to the defense of employees at some of my favorite places, and taken on belligerent and assinine customers who seem to not know when to back the **** off.
Has anyone ever believed it?
At my first “real” permanent job in my Accounting career, the company brought in a motivational speaker of sorts to talk to us. This was a large agricultural company’s corporate HQ, and the business did very little retail, so this person who came to speak to us about customer service began by telling us that a customer is anyone you serve, it doesn’t have to be someone you sell to so we all have customers. And he said that you’ve all heard that adage about the customer always being right, but he wanted to tell us that this was WRONG. He said, “The customer is NOT always right, but the customer IS always the CUSTOMER.” And he pointed out statistics that said, if you provide exceptional customer service a customer will tell one person about it. If however you provide poor customer service, they will tell six people. So I’ve kind of used that as a guiding principal because there are certainly people who are wrong and people who will take advantage. You have to evaluate what is going to make a person happy, and determine which is the lowest cost alternative, giving in when they’re wrong, or telling them to lump it and having them badmouth you to their friends.
When the customer comes first, the customer will last.
I don’t believe it at al but (most of the time) when dealing with customers (which what I do pretty much all day, everyday) I have to pretend to their face that they are always right.
A prime example of this is recently at work I recieved a written complaint from a woman who had all her facts very wrong making her complaint pointless because she was complaining about something that wasn’t actually happening. Although we did put her straight on some issues we also offered her a full refund for her unhappiness and hopefully we will never hear from her again!
Although, like I said, we put her straight on certain issues, we made her feel like she had achieved something by giving her a refund. Of course we know she wasn’t in the right but by making her feel like she was she will (hopefully) remember our good gesture.
One more for the road:
“To my customer: I may not have the answer, but I’ll find it. I may not have the time, but I’ll make it. I may not be the biggest, but I’ll be the most committed to your success.”
“The Customer is Always right”
The key word is CUSTOMER. It is about sales and is nothing more then a marketing tool.
The trick to it is to make sure the “customer” walks away thinking that.
They are either right because they agree with you. Or, you allow them to believe that they are right, in order to get a sale.
Does not matter what the product or service is.
I think you have to think about it in terms of, “Is this a customer that will provide me repeat business or will they attract other bad customers?” Sometimes word-of-mouth is not about how great your product or service is, but about how they were able to get something for nothing from you. I work with someone who constantly brags about how she was able to get contractors to do work for a fraction of the charge because she nitpicks a job to pieces and threatens to either not pay or file a complaint with the Better Business Bureau.
@PandoraBoxx I agree there’s a fine line… but I adhere to the old saying that a satisifed client (or customer) will tell a friend; a disgruntled one will tell a hundred. With the internet, maybe tens of thousands instantaneously.
As a customer, I am pleasant, or at least civil, to the people at whatever place of business I happen to be in. Just because I might be having a not-so-great day doesn’t mean I should be nasty. However, employees (in my opinion) should show me the same courtesy.
Here’s a great website on this topic: link
@ccrow that site helps me keep my sanity at work!! I was just about to post a link to it when I saw that you did. It has some hilarious stories!
@ccrow oh my god I just spent all morning on that site. Lurve? I Guess?
“Sometimes word-of-mouth is not about how great your product or service is, but about how they were able to get something for nothing from you.”
Yes, a good salesman will convince you of that.
I think the customer is always right, but sometimes the customer needs to be educated as to what is right.
In your case @RealEyesRealizeRealLies, my response might depend on the customer. I would balance the cost of her mistake against past or future business.
I used to work for AT&T, before they spun off what is now Comcast. I would be interested to know how they finally resolve your situation.
@Yetanotheruser
After a month of no service (waiting for the new work order) they ultimately agreed to give me 3 months free service. They did not offer it, I had to ask. Everything worked fine until the 3 months was up. Almost to the day, my service went down and took another 3 weeks for them to admit it was on their end and finally fix after three service calls. Even their service techs were badmouthing the company and none of them had complete access to my files.
None of their customer service is connected to one another. Every prompt wants all my info (for faster service) but the next prompt and every rep wants the same info all over again every time. It’s just a nightmare dealing with AT&T. I don’t like saying that because I grew up in a SouthWestern Bell family. Seems a very inefficient company.
“but sometimes the customer needs to be educated as to what is right.”
The “right” is convincing them why they need to buy the product you are selling.
A good business will educate the customer.
A good customer will expect to be educated.
However, the average customer thinks they already know best and will be offended at any attempts at education.
If the customer is me, I definitely believe that. Every time.
As a customer wanting to buy a product. You are already in “I want” mode. Or you would not be there.
Sure call it “window shopping.”
Now you just need to be convince to hand over your money.
I always say a good salesman can sell buttons to someone that is looking for a zipper.
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