Management lives in what Scott Adams called “Boss World: where the laws of time, space and logic don’t apply.” There’s no such thing as inadequate staffing levels for the objectives the company assigns us, because by definition the staffing levels the company sets are correct and any failure to achieve our objective must reflect our own laziness and incompetence. If the company devised a staffing matrix with one orderly per hundred patients, if all one hundred of them didn’t get a bath we’d be “counselled” on our “need for improvement.”

The company’s objective is customer service, and us peons can provide that service no matter what staffing levels and workloads we’re given–and if we can’t feed five thousand with five loaves and two fishes, or make bricks without straw, we take the blame for doing a bad job.

They actually warn us never to tell a patient that we’re understaffed. They want the patients to think they went five days without a bath or lay in their own shit waiting for a bedpan because we’re just lazy assholes doing a shitty job–not because the hospital administration is a bunch of goddamned fucking human filth who used the money for patient care to fund their own third vacation homes.

However, I want to point out that even the nicest customers get really frustrated sometimes (like being on hold for ever or being transferred 10 times around) and landing on an innocent customer service representative. Who’s fault is it then?

“One of the consistent back up statements of ‘The Customer is Always Right’ is the amount of dollars it costs to replace a customer. It costs more to replace a customer than to retain one most times.”

D’oh!… Here’s how it goes…
:))

1. You get an unreasonable customer.
2. You stick with your employee, because the employee is right.
3. You lose the customer.
4. It costs you a lot to replace the customer.

I can understand that. But let’s put it this way; if all business owners would think healthy and not butt-kiss customers when customers happen to be WRONG, then… for whom would your customer leave you?
Go where?
Go to “not being a customer anymore”?

The reason for which now an unreasonable customer leaves is because somewhere else some business owner will be more than happy to take anything from his clients.

NO! The customers actually isn’t always right. How could he be? What?… are we selling to Goethe, Einstein, Freud… and I didn’t know about it?… Some customers are plain stupid and could never ever be right. Simple as that. Fair enough, with all my apologies if anyone feels offended.

My regards to all.

Lets take some statements:
1) “Everything in this store is for free, so i dont need to pay”
2) “I’d like to have a coffe”
3) “a ticket to the spaceshuttle, please, i want to visit my relatives in europe”

Obviously, the first statement is wrong. If you grant the customer the privilege to be right here, you’ll go bankrupt. The statement is exxagerated, but basically the examples in the comments about customers bitching until they get something of a monetary value are this. In my opinion this are the customers you want to send to the competition: they do not have a problem you can solve. You calculated your prices, according to the product, they basically want the product, but do not want to pay. Yes, maybe one could calculate, that there is still a profit if you give this customer 50%, but i think there are some hidden factors that are mostly ignored this way, besides the impact onto the workers, you send a signal to anyone that they should be bad customers in order to get better prices.

The second statement is, in my opinion, the kind where TCIAR should be applied. Do not tell him “no, you want tea, it’s much better”. The customer has a problem, so solve it. You are not the judge of the customers needs.

The third statement is a little more complicated, and more real life. The customer has a problem (he wants to visit europeans). This is not for disposition; to tell him, he should visit his chinese friends instead does not help. But he has a wrong idea about the solution (you do not need a spaceshuttle for that). The tricky part is to determine if the customer is one of kind 1 or 2.
Simplified, if you rephrase the Problem as something like “i understand you want to go to europe, but a spaceshuttle doesnt bring you there. i could however sell you these flights”, and a discussion about what exactly the problem is and what solutions apply, he is a good customer that should be catered to. If he starts bitching about that he knows better than a peon how to get there, loose him. you wont make any money with him anyway, because after the spaceshuttle did not bring him to europe, he is more likeliy to sue you than to pay you.

So, basically, the customer is always right about the target, but, simple things like coffe aside, rarely right about the way.

In consulting, in my experience, abusive behaviour comes from the customers who insist on “their” way. It is not only acceptable, but important to fire those, because you cannot solve their problems, and therefore they will never pay you. Abusive behavior is more an indicator than the real reason to get rid of them.