The Customer Is Not Always Right. But Something Is

Robby

If you work in a customer-facing role for about a week, you’ll have determined that the “customer is always right” is absolutely wrong. But if this adage doesn’t make sense, why do we use it? And if it’s incorrect, is there something we should be looking to instead?

Indianapolis is in the heart of the Midwest, which some people think has the nicest of all employees. Survey data puts Indiana in the top ten states for customer service jobs, but only the top twenty for customer service overall.

That might mean we’re supposed to know something about good customer service. But if Hoosier practicality should tell us anything, it’s that the customer isn’t always right: but that it’s always right to do what’s best for the customer.

© Flickr User sekihan

For example:

• If the customer wants you do to something that is unsafe, unethical, or illegal, the right thing to do is to protect the customer from those negative consequences
• If the customer wants you to give them priority over someone else without cause, the right choice is to recognize that if the tables were turned they wouldn’t want to be snubbled
• If the customer wants to mistreat your staff, the right choice is to recognize that your staff can only help customers if they are in good spirits

In theory these things are easy to recognize. In practice they are challenging.

The customer isn’t always right. But it’s always right to have integrity.