Is The Customer Always Right?
- shanelood2
- Jun 4, 2019
- 3 min read
Updated: Jun 21, 2019
This worldwide slogan in the arena of customer service has long been a main mentality to every costumers and sellers as well. I dug into the origin of this mantra and found this – “The customer is always right” was originally coined in 1909 by Harry Gordon Selfridge, the founder of Selfridge's department store in London, and is typically used by businesses to convince customers that they will get good service at this company and convince employees to give customers good service (Alexander Kjerulf, 2014).
To business owners this serves as a guide for them to establish a standard in upholding better customer services. To customers, this gives them an edge to fully exercise their rights to buy the highest quality product and service they deserve. However, things evolved and the goals and objectives did not stay as it should be.
Situation 1
"Customers gradually throws unreasonable complaints because of the psyche that they are always right."
This resulted in a serious struggle to business owners and more especially to the employees as well. I myself, is a victim to this paradigm. Ten (10) years of being employed in a manufacturing industry leading the quality control department incurred a distress to myself and the team. It doesn’t convince staff anymore to encourage good customer service but rather it has positioned the mindset of employees against the customer and the management. Defense and retaliation inside the company occurred.
Situation 2
"Customers think they have all the right to get mad at every employee creating embarrassing scenes."
Finally, after all that has been said and done, the customer gets mad at you and creates an embarrassing scene. The values and morals of customers has lost its way and the judgment of right from wrong is now a debatable matter.
In his book Customer Centricity, Peter Fader encourages business owners to focus on the customers who matter most: “Not all customers deserve your company’s best efforts. And despite what the old adage says, the customer is most definitely not always right. Because in the world of customer centricity, there are good customers…and then there is everybody else.”
While the above situations may be realistically happening the other side of the island should also be explored. Total quality management teaches us to empower employees, however, the person who needs to be empowered most is the customer. Businesses can only grow due to customers and without customers, there could be no business at all. Some things should also be imperatively remembered by business owners:
- there are customers that understand about the customer services and products therefore when they complain, they are certain about what they are complaining about. Not all customers are the same, there are also good and reasonable ones.
- for every customer dissatisfaction consider it as an opportunity to improve and find some insights to develop more.
- do not be defensive at outright customer complaints, contrary to what the legal department will tell you. You may sound legally right but will lose the customer or the company’s image at the end of the day.
Final Thoughts:
Is the customer always right? - The answer is NO.
Should you fight back? - The answer is also a “BIG NO”.
No matter how probable you are, always have a calm and supportive disposition to soothe the customer’s anger. A total quality company looks into the sides of the customer, the employee and the business operation without prejudices. The art of balancing an equation is a skill a business owner must perfect!
The workload however, might be grueling for a business owner but there are a number of online services and online jobs nowadays catered by virtual assistants and online administrative staff that will help business owners focus more on strategy and management delegating the bulk of admin works to the experts. Click here if you need one.
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