“The customer is always right” was coined in 1909 and has resonated based on a belief that it positively impacts consumer behaviour. But does it? How does it benefit a company when a customer, being wrong, is interacting frequently with a company, exemplifying and maturing bad or even abusive behaviour simply due to a belief that they are right?
When companies implement this mantra as the basis of employee interaction with customers, it fails! Failure is inevitable because if consistently, the customer is upheld against employees when the customer is clearly wrong, the employee ends up feeling less valued and important. Whilst in the short-term, this increases sales because it appeases the customer, in the long run, it leads to employee resentment and want to do their job to the highest standard because no matter what happens, “the customer is always right” so their efforts are pointless!
Feeling resentment and less valued leads to unhappiness and this unhappiness will eventually translate into how employees administer customer service, which then, impacts on company sales and growth. So who does “the customer is always right benefit?” Nobody!
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Marian: The customer isn’t always right. In fact they are usually wrong. BUT, they always get their way! Without those customers, with all of their idiosyncrasies, you won’t have any employees around to worry about. The key is to have a company culture that promotes people skills. These skills can’t be taught in a meeting room. Your employees will pick the skills up if they see them being implemented by someone else. A business must have someone that can correctly handle abusive customers so others can learn how to do the same. Customers are sometimes grumpy, demanding, unreasonable. Guess what? This is normal. If the employees understand their products/services, and if they are concerned with truly helping customers, they will be able to look past all of the negatives and figure out how to settle the abusive customer down so problems can be solved. It’s critical that management is there to back-up the employees and assure them of a job well done when a difficult situation arises. You definitely want to treat employees well, but you are not in business to babysit employee happiness!
Very informative reply. I appreciate it. Just want to add that now, especially in these difficult economic times, many companies are so concerned about customer numbers declining that when a difficult situation arises, they side with the customer, in front of the employee and perpetuate a ‘them’ vs ‘us’ company culture between employees and management. So the way to go is to teach and promote better employee skills. Thank you for the reply. Always an opportunity to learn!
Marion: You must always side with the customer but not in a way that degrades the employee, especially in front of the customer. I learned customer service from the best I ever saw at it. My Father! I know that’s a subjective statement but it happens to be true. Whenever I had a difficult customer, and had to call him to the selling floor to assist me, the rule was that I don’t say another word to the customer while he’s handling them. But I HAD to stand there and watch him. This is the best teaching technique ever devised in selling situations. I can’t tell you how much I learned from this. It didn’t make me feel bad because I had already done all I knew at the time and had to call him into the situation. After he was finished dealing with the customer, he would take me aside and explain to me what he did and why he did it. This is how I ran our business and our employees were always satisfied. It is simple, it is empathetic, and it is effective. You can’t TELL employees to care about customers. You have to SHOW them how to care. They WILL learn! Have a nice day.
What your dad does in difficult customer situations is excellent, it models the correct behaviour and thus, an effective way to learn how to deal with your customers. Thank you for the comment.
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