Top 5 reasons why “The customer is Always Right” is wrong

[|Zach|]

http://positivesharing.com/2008/03/t...ight-is-wrong/

When the customer isn’t right - for your business

One woman who frequently flew on Southwest, was constantly disappointed with every aspect of the company’s operation. In fact, she became known as the “Pen Pal” because after every flight she wrote in with a complaint.

She didn’t like the fact that the company didn’t assign seats; she didn’t like the absence of a first-class section; she didn’t like not having a meal in flight; she didn’t like Southwest’s boarding procedure; she didn’t like the flight attendants’ sporty uniforms and the casual atmosphere.

Her last letter, reciting a litany of complaints, momentarily stumped Southwest’s customer relations people. They bumped it up to Herb’s [Kelleher, CEO of Southwest] desk, with a note: ‘This one’s yours.’

In sixty seconds, Kelleher wrote back and said, ‘Dear Mrs. Crabapple, We will miss you. Love, Herb.’”

The phrase “The customer is always right” was originally coined by Harry Gordon Selfridge, the founder of Selfridge’s department store in London in 1909, and is typically used by businesses to:

1. Convince customers that they will get good service at this company
2. Convince employees to give customers good service

Fortunately more and more businesses are abandoning this maxim - ironically because it leads to bad customer service.

Here are the top five reasons why “The customer is always right” is wrong.

1: It makes employees unhappy

Gordon Bethune is a brash Texan (as is Herb Kelleher, coincidentally) who is best known for turning Continental Airlines around “From Worst to First,” a story told in his book of the same title from 1998. He wanted to make sure that both customers and employees liked the way Continental treated them, so he made it very clear that the maxim “the customer is always right” didn’t hold sway at Continental.

In conflicts between employees and unruly customers he would consistently side with his people. Here’s how he puts it:

When we run into customers that we can’t reel back in, our loyalty is with our employees. They have to put up with this stuff every day. Just because you buy a ticket does not give you the right to abuse our employees . . .

We run more than 3 million people through our books every month. One or two of those people are going to be unreasonable, demanding jerks. When it’s a choice between supporting your employees, who work with you every day and make your product what it is, or some irate jerk who demands a free ticket to Paris because you ran out of peanuts, whose side are you going to be on?

You can’t treat your employees like serfs. You have to value them . . . If they think that you won’t support them when a customer is out of line, even the smallest problem can cause resentment.

So Bethune trusts his people over unreasonable customers. What I like about this attitude is that it balances employees and customers, where the “always right” maxim squarely favors the customer - which is not a good idea, because, as Bethune says, it causes resentment among employees.

Of course there are plenty of examples of bad employees giving lousy customer service. But trying to solve this by declaring the customer “always right” is counter-productive.
2: It gives abrasive customers an unfair advantage

Using the slogan “The customer is always right” abusive customers can demand just about anything - they’re right by definition, aren’t they? This makes the employees’ job that much harder, when trying to rein them in.

Also, it means that abusive people get better treatment and conditions than nice people. That always seemed wrong to me, and it makes much more sense to be nice to the nice customers to keep them coming back.
3: Some customers are bad for business

Most businesses think that “the more customers the better”. But some customers are quite simply bad for business.

Danish IT service provider ServiceGruppen proudly tell this story:

One of our service technicians arrived at a customer’s site for a maintenance task, and to his great shock was treated very rudely by the customer.

When he’d finished the task and returned to the office, he told management about his experience. They promptly cancelled the customer’s contract.

Just like Kelleher dismissed the irate lady who kept complaining (but somehow also kept flying on Southwest), ServiceGruppen fired a bad customer. Note that it was not even a matter of a financial calculation - not a question of whether either company would make or lose money on that customer in the long run. It was a simple matter of respect and dignity and of treating their employees right.
4: It results in worse customer service

Rosenbluth International, a corporate travel agency, took it even further. CEO Hal Rosenbluth wrote an excellent book about their approach called Put The Customer Second - Put your people first and watch’em kick butt.

Rosenbluth argues that when you put the employees first, they put the customers first. Put employees first, and they will be happy at work. Employees who are happy at work give better customer service because:

* They care more about other people, including customers
* They have more energy
* They are happy, meaning they are more fun to talk to and interact with
* They are more motivated

On the other hand, when the company and management consistently side with customers instead of with employees, it sends a clear message that:

* Employees are not valued
* That treating employees fairly is not important
* That employees have no right to respect from customers
* That employees have to put up with everything from customers

When this attitude prevails, employees stop caring about service. At that point, real good service is almost impossible - the best customers can hope for is fake good service. You know the kind I mean: corteous on the surface only.
5: Some customers are just plain wrong

Herb Kelleher agrees, as this passage From Nuts! the excellent book about Southwest Airlines shows:

Herb Kelleher […] makes it clear that his employees come first — even if it means dismissing customers. But aren’t customers always right? “No, they are not,” Kelleher snaps. “And I think that’s one of the biggest betrayals of employees a boss can possibly commit. The customer is sometimes wrong. We don’t carry those sorts of customers. We write to them and say, ‘Fly somebody else. Don’t abuse our people.’”

If you still think that the customer is always right, read this story from Bethune’s book “From Worst to First”:

A Continental flight attendant once was offended by a passenger’s child wearing a hat with Nazi and KKK emblems on it. It was pretty offensive stuff, so the attendant went to the kid’s father and asked him to put away the hat. “No,” the guy said. “My kid can wear what he wants, and I don’t care who likes it.”

The flight attendant went into the cockpit and got the first officer, who explained to the passenger the FAA regulation that makes it a crime to interfere with the duties of a crew member. The hat was causing other passengers and the crew discomfort, and that interfered with the flight attendant’s duties. The guy better put away the hat.

He did, but he didn’t like it. He wrote many nasty letters. We made every effort to explain our policy and the federal air regulations, but he wasn’t hearing it. He even showed up in our executive suite to discuss the matter with me. I let him sit out there. I didn’t want to see him and I didn’t want to listen to him. He bought a ticket on our airplane, and that means we’ll take him where he wants to go. But if he’s going to be rude and offensive, he’s welcome to fly another airline.

The fact is that some customers are just plain wrong, that businesses are better of without them, and that managers siding with unreasonable customers over employees is a very bad idea, that results in worse customer service.

So put your people first. And watch them put the customers first.

['Hamas' Jenkins]

After having worked in electronics at one point, I can tell you that 90% of problems with devices are due to user error and general dumbassery.

Most customers are ignorant assholes.

[Amnorix]

Originally Posted by Deberg_1990

Thats a sad way to go through life....Some people will never be satisfied.

I can understand why business's dont want their business then.

Didnt Sprint dump a bunch of people like this last year?? Not that it helped them any....

Yep.

[Amnorix]

I still remember one time when I was a kid working at McDonald's and someone requested a "rare" Quarter Pounder. It's odd to get that kind of request there, but being a bit fussy about my food myself, I had no problem, did it personally (I was the senior guy in grill) and was careful to do it right.

5 minutes later the guy comes back having eatena bout 85% of it, says "look, it's rare," and requests that we trash it and get another one. I heard about it and nearly went over the counter to strangle him. Stupid F**king manager gave him another one, free, on the "customer is always right theory".

And I was so pissed off about it I still remember it now, 20 years later...

[dtebbe]

The way I run my business is simple.

- Reasonable customers are always right

- Unreasonable customers can kiss our collective ass

DT

[chasedude]

Originally Posted by 'Hamas' Jenkins

Most customers are ignorant assholes.

I agree!

[Frazod]

Unfortunately, this doesn't work with the legal industry (at least the high level stuff my firm handles). If we tell some rude prick to go pound sand, we can lose hundreds of thousands in legal fees; perhaps millions in lost future business. Especially if the rude prick represents the financing segment of a transaction, you've just got to suck it up and deal with his shit.

Golden Rule: he with the gold makes the rules.

[ClevelandBronco]

Originally Posted by kaplin42

Think of this article next time you go out to eat. Having worked in resteraunts for 10 years and now doing tech support, I can very easily tell you that a majority of the time, the customer isn't only wrong, but ****ing reeruned stupid, and more than that, generally assholes to boot.

The "majority of the time, the customer isn't only wrong, but ****ing reeruned stupid, and more than that, generally assholes to boot"?

I think you missed the point of the article. It was about a very special minority of customers.

I'd fire your ass immediately.

[The Franchise]

Originally Posted by kaplin42

Think of this article next time you go out to eat. Having worked in resteraunts for 10 years and now doing tech support, I can very easily tell you that a majority of the time, the customer isn't only wrong, but ****ing reeruned stupid, and more than that, generally assholes to boot.

Try working in the elections business. I have to deal with people's "rights". These are the same people who can't correctly fill in a little bubble on a ballot. I don't know how many times I've dealt with bitchy customers because they're registered as the "wrong" party. They all get pissed when I show them their voter registration form and they can see that they're the ones that made the mistake.

[Skyy God]

Originally Posted by frazod

Unfortunately, this doesn't work with the legal industry (at least the high level stuff my firm handles). If we tell some rude prick to go pound sand, we can lose hundreds of thousands in legal fees; perhaps millions in lost future business. Especially if the rude prick represents the financing segment of a transaction, you've just got to suck it up and deal with his shit.

Golden Rule: he with the gold makes the rules.

Doesn't work on the low level stuff also. Pretty much the best recourse is to make up for the aggrivation in other ways.

['Hamas' Jenkins]

I'll never forget the first year that I worked at Radio Shack in college. This asshole comes in and wants a checkbook calculator. Well in spite of the absolutely idiotic nature of such a request, we actually do have such a product, since the one who sucks the penis can neither use internet banking nor can he perform the complex procedure of subtraction on paper.

He starts giving my coworker a hard time about the one that we do have because it's the last one that we've got left. He goes back and gets a box for it, boxes it up, and starts to ring it out.

Of course, the asshole is bitching the whole time about how long it's taking him to find a fucking 6"x1" box in the back room, and then when he comes back, the guy pays with a check. Well, my coworker asks for ID,

"I'm not giving you my fucking ID."
My coworker calmly says that he has to have to it process a check
"Bullshit, no you don't."
Coworker replies that if he'd like to he can pay w/ cash or a card
"No, I'm writing a goddamned check"
Sir, I'm gonna have to have your license number and see a photo ID
"No, you're fucking not"


At this point, I snap, grab the loose check, rip it up, and hand him the pieces.

I told him "You're right, we don't have to see your ID. Now get the fuck out, the door is that way --->"

He walks off, and as he left the store he said "I was just joking around"



I swear to sweet Christ, if I ever saw that guy again, I'd chop his ass up with a chainsaw just to hear the harmony of the metal teeth whirring through his flesh and chipping his bones.

[The Franchise]

Originally Posted by 'Hamas' Jenkins

I swear to sweet Christ, if I ever saw that guy again, I'd chop his ass up with a chainsaw just to hear the harmony of the metal teeth whirring through his flesh and chipping his bones.

Tell us how you really feel.

[Rain Man]

I have proof that some customers should be jettisoned.

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[Rain Man]

Originally Posted by kaplin42

Think of this article next time you go out to eat. Having worked in resteraunts for 10 years and now doing tech support, I can very easily tell you that a majority of the time, the customer isn't only wrong, but ****ing reeruned stupid, and more than that, generally assholes to boot.

You've seen that guy in my picture, too!

[Megbert]

My boss should read this. I lay out ads for a real estate publication. The realtors get proofs sent to them until they approve the ad. On our end we have me then 2 other people (production managers) that are supposed to proof the ads as well to catch anything I or the realtor may have missed. So with all these checks in place things still fall through the cracks and even if we have a written or emailed OK from the realtor. If a mistake is found my boss blames me. I am all for taking responsibility if I was truly at fault for a 'mistake' but when the customer and people I work with all miss the mistake to me all are to blame. Well I know my boss isn't gonna say to the realtor 'well you approved the ad so some of this is on you as well' He listens to them, gives them a refund or discount and then calls me into his office to ask me why the mistake happened and to let me know that it was my fault in case I didn't realize it was indeed my fault.

[KCChiefsMan]

good read, I couldn't agree more! Too bad it's hard to find a company that believes that though!