Top 5 reasons why “The Customer Is Always Right” is wrong

[irishmasms.livejournal.com]

Top 5 reasons why “The Customer Is Always Right” is wrong:
http://positivesharing.com/2006/07/why-the-customer-is-always-right-results-in-bad-customer-service/

Comments

[omg-teh-funnay.livejournal.com]

Ah, what a great article. I want more companies to understand this.

My employer doesn't do it very well :)

[spacebird.livejournal.com]

Top 1 reason:

The customer is usually a fucking moron.

[xforge.livejournal.com]

I just now contemplated sending that to a place I used to work at in Orlando, who fired me because, I kid you not, I "messed up" a file that a customer submitted to me. The file was utterly FUBAR - it was created at a certain proportion and the customer wanted a printout at a much larger proportion that would have left giant white gutters along the tops and bottoms of the graphic. I "mistakenly" called the customer and told him this. Apparently the "correct" thing to do was to distort the graphic to fit the size wanted. How I was supposed to assume that an architect wanted to present a distorted rendering to his clients on a multimillion-dollar project is entirely beyond me, even to this day. Also please note that this was never explained to me beforehand - just "here's how you work this machine, go to town, bye now."

Yes, I think I will investigate whether that flaming scrotum of a senior manager is still working there, and what his email address is.

[lihan161051.livejournal.com]

So they fired you because you had the audacity to check with the customer to make sure the printout would be satisfactory for their purposes at the larger format and alert them to a possible presentation problem? (And simply rescaling it to the new aspect ratio would almost certainly have distorted it in ways that would have caused significant problems, at least for an architectural rendering.) In other words, they fired you for being careful about your job and trying to serve the customer as professionally as possible, and recognizing that the customer's request would have implications the customer may not have been aware of?

Sounds like the client, and your employer, were both jerks and you're probably better off without either one of them.

Then again, I get about one or two of that kind of customer a day, and that kind of positioning has become sort of second nature to me. :S Usually about the third or fourth time I remind them that I genuinely want to see their issue resolved and am trying to do so in the way that best suits their needs, which I am in turn trying to deduce from the few technical clues they're giving me in the middle of their belligerent rants, they start realizing how abusive they're being and more often than not start to calm down and work with me. Sometimes even that's not enough.

Fortunately, our customers aren't always right, even in the eyes of the company. Which makes it considerably easier to get them what they need. Even if it's not what they want, and even if what they truly want is totally unreasonable. ("No, sir, I will not send our CEO over with a replacement computer and have him kneel in front of you uttering profuse and tearful apologies for having made you suffer the indignity of a "server not found" error ..")

[hisamishness.livejournal.com]

Too Good....

[lihan161051.livejournal.com]

I've only needed one reason ..

.. because what customers *want* is sometimes not what they *need*. In some situations, you can change "sometimes" to "usually", and in extreme cases like tech support, it's more like "virtually always". How many times have you had to explain to the Wannabe-Tech Customer who's convinced he knows how to fix everything on his machine that in this case his ironclad conviction that his computer is defective is totally off base, and had to sit through a steady stream of accusations that you're an incompetent idiot and demands to speak to your manager to get your ass fired until you can get him to humor you and do the one thing he actually needs to do? Is he "right" in the sense that "The Customer Is Always Right", and is he then entitled to lecture you about "bad customer service" when 99% of the fault for the call going on for 2 hours instead of 2-3 minutes lies with his almost continuous interruptions when you desperately try to get his focus back on the issue he called in about?

I have to agree with this article. And it's high time this advice got heard at the highest levels of most of the places that employ most of the people on this forum ..

[canray.livejournal.com]

My Boss was a front-line tech not that long ago.

"The Customer isn't always right. In fact, quite often, he's wrong. That's why they called us in the first place."

I love my new job. :-D

Obvious Mario reference...

[jecook]

:: awards OP 50 golden coins, a One-UP, and a Racoon Suit::

Added to community's memories.

Re: Obvious Mario reference...

[irishmasms.livejournal.com]

w00t!!

Re: Obvious Mario reference...

[canray.livejournal.com]

Ah yes, screen-capture from the original Deathmatches!