Is the customer always right?

By Alex Ogundadegbe
The phrase “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 quality service and convince employees to give customers good service. The phrase has been misused in many business environments to make the employee think that the customer typically can do anything and get away with it! This is not true!
That the customer is always right does not mean that he has the right to behave in an undesirable way in the business environment. There have been situations in which customers have been abusive, uncouth and even violent and the tendency for proponents of the phrase to defend these misdemeanors might cause a fracas among employees within the organization. The organization is supposed to be as good as its employees and if we because of valuing and keeping the customer tend to put the employee down we could be courting trouble. So we must begin to value both the customer and the employee and make sure that the customer is not put above the employee in any instant. Let us face it, customers might leave in spite of all our attempts to favor them, but we are stuck with our employees whom we use to attend to the customer in the final analysis.
If we misuse our employees and do not manage employee-employer relations properly, on the long run we are harming the business and putting our customer relations at risk. In customer relationship management, we teach that proper customer service begins from within the organization. If we do not treat each other well, there would be no empathy to relate with the customer. So there is a customer service profit and growth chain which begins from what we call “Internal Service Quality”. The people you work with are your first, ‘internal customers” you must learn to treat them right before you even think of “external service quality” which refers to those who come from outside of the organization.
Alexander Kjerulf, Happiness Consultant warns that if we emphasize “the customer is always right” concept too much and neglect our own staff, it poses a grave danger to the prospects of the organization. Five reasons are given.
It makes employees unhappy: If you keep throwing the phrase in the faces of your staff without listening to their concerns you will make them unhappy at work. There is no greater tragedy than an unhappy employee! His mood will infect the other people around and before you know it, you will have a team of grouches handling your customer relations, wearing long faces and serving as a repellant to customers.
It gives abrasive customers an unfair advantage! If you have been in customer service long enough, you would have handled the rude and abusive customer who has no concern for decorum and politeness. Some would descend to the level of being uncouth and unpleasant in their use of language. Others have become violent in their disposition. There is no way such behavior can be assessed as being right!
Some customers are bad for business! Did I just write that? Yes, I did! We are taught in customer care that we ought to welcome and be empathetic with all customers. But there are some customers who can lead to a loss of customers in the business environment, something we refer to as attrition. Nobody wants to relate with customers who will make us lose business. We might be under the illusion that we can win them over. But what if we can’t?
Waving the phrase “the customer is always right” in the faces of our employees can result in the worse customer Service ever. Those who handle our customer service might become antagonistic or apathetic. Any one of these two extremes is dangerous for business. It is also important to emphasize that some customers are just wrong! Wrong in their attitude, language, demands and even appearances! On an American Airline sometime ago, a child boarded a flight spotting a KKK cap. The Klu Klux Klan is not the most popular group in the history of America. Known for killing black people in the period of segregation, the klan is a white supremacy group that is known for racial discrimination. An airhostess noted the cap and politely requested that the boy’s father tell him to remove the cap. The man refused, arguing that his boy had the right to dress the way he wished. A long argument ensued. The airhostess contacted that the first officer of the flight who promptly insisted that the boy must remove the cap. Reluctantly, his father told him to take it off. But after the flight, a whole lot of complaint letters came from the man. Was the customer right to wear such apparel on board a commercial flight? The customer is not always right.