Customer Service: Is the Customer Always Right?

We’ve all heard the age-old saying “The customer is always right.” and tries to follow that rule on a daily basis in customer service. It only makes our jobs easier to offer top-notch service that exceeds expectations and welcomes the customer back on a regular basis. Let’s face it, when it comes to business, they’d all fail without them.

Unfortunately, in customer service, they know this fact and at times will take advantage of it. The attitude to take their business elsewhere or channeling their inner “Karen” if you’re a fan of memes really destroys the customer and service provider relationship. The new-age attitude where in order to get any kind of decent service, you have to be openly aggressive in your demands. “A close mouth doesn’t get fed”, right?

Wrong!

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When it comes to customer service, there’s nothing more disrespectful to a person, business, or anyone within an earshot of your conversion that proves you’re an unruly d-ck to some poor soul who just has to obey the rules set in front of them by the little handbook they’re given at orientation and then thrown to you wolves.

Yes, the customer is always right, but to an extent. As a customer, you’re always right in your expectations, not in your demands.

You can expect courteous service, in a prompt yet accurate fashion that satisfies your common goal. That’s not breaking news, you and the businesses you shop at are after the same thing. You want to buy it, they want to sell it to you. But guess what, things don’t always go according to plan. That poor worker you’re unloading on with whatever demons have been chasing you didn’t wake up that morning and decide “let’s see how many people I can piss off today.”

Mistakes happen. Not intentionally, but they happen often enough that there’s a term for it. Its called human error, and despite that error, most places want to fix it for you. But even when it’s not an error, there are just certain things no one can change because your demands are too high.

Let me break it down like this, say you want to eat at McDonald’s. You go in to order your Big Mac meal and should expect a prompt, accurate order, taken with a smile and haste. When you get it, expect it to come exactly as specified, and fulfill the hunger craving.

What you can’t do is go into McDonald’s, who serves burgers, and demand spaghetti. Guess what, they don’t have it. They can’t magically bend the rules and make it happen. You can’t demand a manager and expect them to produce pasta when it never has or ever will be in their marketing strategy.

Of course, this is just hypothetically speaking, but it should apply the next time you think of unloading on someone who’s just there to help you. As a matter of fact, they’re there just to help you do something you didn’t want to do yourself. Don’t go in to a business throwing demands around expecting better customer service. No matter how hard they try, there’s only so much they can do.