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When the customer isn't right – for your business

One woman who frequently flew on Southwest, was constantly disappointed with every aspect of the visitor's operation. In fact, she became known every bit the "Pen Pal" because after every flight she wrote in with a complaint.

She didn't like the fact that the company didn't assign seats; she didn't like the absence of a outset-class section; she didn't similar non having a meal in flight; she didn't like Southwest'southward boarding procedure; she didn't like the flying attendants' sporty uniforms and the casual temper.

Her final alphabetic character, reciting a litany of complaints, momentarily stumped Southwest'due south customer relations people. They bumped information technology upwardly to Herb'due south [Kelleher, CEO of Southwest] desk, with a note: 'This one's yours.'

In sixty seconds, Kelleher wrote back and said, 'Dear Mrs. Crabapple, We will miss you. Love, Herb.'"

The phrase "The customer is always right" was originally coined past Harry Gordon Selfridge, the founder of Selfridge's department store in London in 1909, and is typically used by businesses to:

1. Convince customers that they will get good service at this company
2. Convince employees to give customers good service

Fortunately more and more businesses are abandoning this proverb – ironically because it leads to bad customer service.

Here are the tiptop v reasons why "The customer is always right" is incorrect.

1: It makes employees unhappy

Gordon Bethune is a advised Texan (as is Herb Kelleher, coincidentally) who is best known for turning Continental Airlines around "From Worst to First," a story told in his book of the aforementioned title from 1998. He wanted to make sure that both customers and employees liked the way Continental treated them, and then he made it very clear that the maxim "the client is e'er right" didn't concur sway at Continental.

In conflicts betwixt employees and unruly customers he would consistently side with his people. Here's how he puts it:

When nosotros encounter customers that nosotros tin't reel back in, our loyalty is with our employees. They have to put up with this stuff every day. Just because y'all buy a ticket does not give yous the right to corruption our employees . . .

We run more 3 meg people through our books every month. One or 2 of those people are going to exist unreasonable, enervating jerks. When it'due south a selection between supporting your employees, who work with yous every 24-hour interval and make your product what it is, or some irate wiggle who demands a free ticket to Paris considering you ran out of peanuts, whose side are you lot going to exist on?

You can't care for your employees like serfs. Yous take to value them . . . If they remember that you won't support them when a customer is out of line, fifty-fifty the smallest problem can cause resentment.

So Bethune trusts his people over unreasonable customers. What I like about this attitude is that it balances employees and customers, where the "always correct" proverb squarely favors the customer – which is not a good idea, because, as Bethune says, it causes resentment amidst employees.

Of course there are plenty of examples of bad employees giving lousy customer service. But trying to solve this by declaring the customer "always right" is counter-productive.

2: It gives abrasive customers an unfair advantage

Using the slogan "The customer is e'er right" abusive customers can demand simply about anything – they're right by definition, aren't they? This makes the employees' job that much harder, when trying to rein them in.

Too, information technology ways that abusive people get better handling and conditions than nice people. That e'er seemed wrong to me, and it makes much more than sense to exist overnice to the dainty customers to keep them coming dorsum.

3: Some customers are bad for business

Most businesses think that "the more customers the amend". But some customers are quite simply bad for business organization.

Danish IT service provider ServiceGruppen proudly tell this story:

One of our service technicians arrived at a client's site for a maintenance chore, and to his great stupor was treated very rudely by the client.

When he'd finished the task and returned to the office, he told management about his feel. They promptly cancelled the customer's contract.

Just similar Kelleher dismissed the irate lady who kept lament (but somehow as well kept flying on Southwest), ServiceGruppen fired a bad customer. Note that it was non even a matter of a financial calculation – non a question of whether either visitor would make or lose coin on that customer in the long run. Information technology was a simple matter of respect and dignity and of treating their employees correct.

4: Information technology results in worse client service

Rosenbluth International, a corporate travel bureau, took it even further. CEO Hal Rosenbluth wrote an excellent volume about their approach called Put The Customer 2nd – Put your people first and lookout man�em kick butt.

Rosenbluth argues that when you put the employees first, they put the customers first. Put employees first, and they will be happy at work. Employees who are happy at work requite better customer service because:

• They intendance more almost other people, including customers
• They take more energy
• They are happy, meaning they are more than fun to talk to and interact with
• They are more motivated

On the other paw, when the company and management consistently side with customers instead of with employees, information technology sends a clear bulletin that:

• Employees are non valued
• That treating employees fairly is non important
• That employees take no correct to respect from customers
• That employees have to put up with everything from customers

When this attitude prevails, employees stop caring most service. At that indicate, real adept service is nearly impossible – the all-time customers can hope for is fake good service. You know the kind I mean: corteous on the surface only.

5: Some customers are just manifestly incorrect

Herb Kelleher agrees, every bit this passage From Nuts! the excellent book near Southwest Airlines shows:

Herb Kelleher […] makes it clear that his employees come first — even if it means dismissing customers. Merely aren't customers always right? "No, they are not," Kelleher snaps. "And I think that's ane of the biggest betrayals of employees a boss tin can perhaps commit. The client is sometimes incorrect. We don't carry those sorts of customers. We write to them and say, 'Fly somebody else. Don't corruption our people.'"

If you still recollect that the customer is always right, read this story from Bethune's volume "From Worst to First":

A Continental flight attendant one time was offended past a passenger's kid wearing a lid with Nazi and KKK emblems on it. It was pretty offensive stuff, so the attendant went to the kid's begetter and asked him to put away the hat. "No," the guy said. "My kid can clothing what he wants, and I don't care who likes it."

The flight bellboy went into the cockpit and got the first officer, who explained to the passenger the FAA regulation that makes it a crime to interfere with the duties of a coiffure member. The lid was causing other passengers and the crew discomfort, and that interfered with the flying bellboy's duties. The guy better put away the lid.

He did, merely he didn't like information technology. He wrote many nasty letters. Nosotros made every effort to explain our policy and the federal air regulations, but he wasn't hearing it. He even showed up in our executive suite to hash out the matter with me. I let him sit out there. I didn't want to see him and I didn't want to listen to him. He bought a ticket on our airplane, and that ways we'll have him where he wants to become. Simply if he'due south going to be rude and offensive, he'southward welcome to fly another airline.

The fact is that some customers are just plain incorrect, that businesses are better of without them, and that managers siding with unreasonable customers over employees is a very bad idea, that results in worse customer service.

So put your people outset. And watch them put the customers kickoff.

UPDATE:
This mail service has spawned a swell give-and-take here and ane some other websites.
Digg
"One of the consistent back up statements of "The Customer is Always Right" is the amount of dollars information technology costs to replace a customer. It costs more to replace a client than to retain ane nearly times. However, it also costs a lot more to recruit, hire, and train a new employee than it does to keep one happy."

Kinkoids Unite – a site for Kinko's workers
"In my region, when an employee is mentioned in a customer complaint, he/she has to repent to all xi middle managers in a conference call whether they were wrong or wronged."

AdultDVDTalk (huh?)
"Unfortunately though, virtually companies in the customer service arena no longer fifty-fifty teach the basics of customer service. They merely presume that information technology is a common-sense thing. Having spent 20 years interviewing job applicants, I tin can also say that there is no such thing equally common sense! Just take a await at the high school and college grads showing up for job interviews in jeans and tee-shirts or chewing gum…or my favorite was the young lady who excused herself to reply her jail cell phone and carry on a cursory but totally unnecessary conversation!"

Reddit
"On a very, very small number of occasions in my various service roles over the years, I've asked customers to get out the institution because they were incorribly belligerent, hostile and calumniating, and flat-out refused to accept any try to satisfy them. In these cases, the people were shopping for a fight rather than a commodity."

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thomasamorne.blogspot.com

Source: https://positivesharing.com/2006/07/why-the-customer-is-always-right-results-in-bad-customer-service/