The Right Way To Treat Customers, Even When They Are Wrong

There's a famous adage which you've no doubt heard. 'The Customer is ALWAYS right!' Yet the fact is, customers are often wrong. But if you have an interest in a successful business, and better relations between employees and customers, then it's still right to act as if the customer is always right. Here's why.

In 1909, American business man Gordon Selfridge opened his Selfridge Department Store in London with the idea that shopping wasn’t just something people should do when they have to do it, but because they might want to do it if they enjoyed doing it enough.
The business logic was inescapable. The more a customer enjoyed the experience of shopping, the longer they might engage in it, and therefore the more they might spend in the doing of it. Using the pleasure of shopping as the means to this end, Selfridge designed his store to be user friendly in its layout, attractive in its decoration. warm and welcoming in that he staffed his store with people whose purpose was to help people, not sell products.

He took an advertising phrase that was then in use by the Ritz Hotel in London, the customer is never wrong, and turned it around to say, proactively and positively, that the customer is always right. It wasn't long before this clever idea and the phrase that expressed it, made it's way to the USA where it took off as a slogan for smart advertisers. The idea was to let customers know that they were welcome to do business and they would be treated well in exchange for their business.

The wholesale adoption of the Selfridge slogan that 'the customer is always right' happened for at least two very good reasons.” First, we’re all somebody’s customer, and we all want to be treated well. When you get bad service from an unpleasant service provider, it is comforting to reassure yourself that "I deserve better treatment, this isn't right! And they are going to go out of business without me!”

Here is a second and more compelling reason to pay attention to customers as if they are always right: It’s because the customer has power. The power to walk away. The power to takes others away, through word of mouth. And in the case of the public sector, the power to stick around, become a crank, and make life for the people in that business difficult.

When customers behave badly towards service rep, it is likely that they were triggered by an event or incident in which they felt disrespected or dismissed first. It’s possible, too, that in almost every incident, if you looked into the relationship of the service provider with their own company, you’d find an event or incident in which the employee providing the service felt dissed, dismissed, or disrespected by a coworker, supervisor or manager.

While it may be true that as many as 10% of unhappy customers and employees are just unhappy no matter what, a more useful approach to service is to decide that unhappy customers and employees are a true testing ground for all of us to develop our skills, our stamina, and our service ethic.

The option remains in any business to say “We’re sorry you’re not happy. We wish you well,” and admit that the relationship isn’t working for either side. It may also be possible to refer unpleasant people to a competitor (as pleasantly as possible, of course). This may be what Herb Kelleher intended, when he wrote to the chronically dissatisfied customer of his Southwest Airlines that ‘Dear Mrs. Crabapple, We will miss you. Love, Herb.’”

But at the end of the day, ending the relationship with an unhappy customer ought to be your last line of defense, not your first or even second resort. When all else fails, it can be a comfort to know you have this inevitable fall back position. Still, I think it better to fall forward (learn everything you can, apply it and keep going!). Otherwise, getting rid of unhappy customers by deciding to be right that they’re not right could become the easy way out with difficult consequences. Yet if you, as my customer, insisted that it's wrong to say the customer is always right, well, I'd let you be right.

After all, won’t your business be better served to find reasons to love your customers than to make excuses for losing them?

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