How right can be "a customer is always right?"

So, you’re sitting on your table enjoying a warm freshly served meal that you’ve impatiently waited for while you hear the customer next to your table grumbling at the waiter.

Everything seems normal at the beginning. It’s a usual and not alarming situation that occurs almost in every service or product provider. You can imagine the rest…

The customer asks for the manager on duty aiming for a more conscientious behavior.

Then you ask yourself the prominent question: Is the customer always right?

It’s one of the most common century old catchphrase: “the customer is always right” is brought to the mainstream and the business world by the American British retailer and founder of the London-based Selfridges Department Store Harry Gordon Selfridge.

According to the article written by the “Entrepreneur”, “5 reasons why the customer is not always right”, treating customers like they are always right can be self-destructive for different reasons. One of them is asking yourself whether your business needs every customer.

Do you actually want every person to be your customer?

Here’s the idea. Businesses want customers who trust them and trust their area of expertise in what they are offering. You don’t want constantly nagging customers who think they are the connoisseur in everything.

You want your customer’s opinion and input but not every customer especially the ones that they don’t realize the final word goes back to the creator of the product.

Plus, do you want to trigger your employees to be the rolling ball of bitterness that will blow up in your face and the face of your business?

Here’s the deal!!

Your hefty profits don’t have a single direction, they actually flow from different scopes and surprisingly to many of you, one of the scopes might be and is your precious employees.

The study published on “CentrePiece”, the magazine of LSE’s center for “Economic performance” (click here for the study) shows a positive and strong correlation between employee wellbeing, productivity and firm performance, hence profits.

Remember this the next time your employee grinds his teeth when faced with a wrongfully angry customer that got his way around at the end.

Remember that you might have gained a customer that will likely come back with another complaint, but you are losing an employee that you’ve invested in.

What about the saying, the customer is the king?

Well he or she sure is the king, without them there are no revenues and there is no point of your business in the first place. But who will deliver your service or product to them? Your employees.

So make sure your mediator reflects your brightest yet the most polished picture of you.

Plus, are kings infallible?

This is a thing to highly doubt. Customers are humans which makes them prone to -well- what we call human mistakes.

So, who comes first? A happy customer or a happy employee?

As an employer, you must weigh things rationally.  

Customers versus employees is the modern version of chicken or the egg.

Does it really matter? Matter of fact, no.

What matters though is keeping both parties satisfied for the sake of your business’ wellbeing and sustainability.

How to do that?

• Educate your employees.
• lead them to be the best mediators but at the same time to know and appreciate the product they are selling or providing.
• Teach them to properly handle different customers without bearing unnecessary insults.

Equally

• Respect your customers.
• Draw a smile on their face after using your product

AND

• Teach them to appreciate your employees as much as you appreciate them as customers.

Finally, you cannot and you will not please every individual but you can be righteous toward your employees and customers to keep generating the most sales from delighted customers and empowered employees.

It’s a culture that should be portrayed in all your business behavior and eventually it will be acknowledged.  

Employees should be well trained to handle angry customers. For more insights on how to deal with dissatisfied customers, check BIM POS article " the Netiquette essentials to cool off angry customers" on the below link.