but one thing …

this would be even nicer if the article redefines its title to :

“CUSTOMERS are always right, unreasonable ones are not.”

To pave way to the idea that there are really are unreasonable customers that is very very bad for any business … and to give credit in turn to those humble customers who may be offended

In my humble opinion …

Just like in my computer business … i train my staffs for months to years
only to be abused and to be embarrassed by unreasonable customers ???

No way, being computer technical requires time and continuous training … and by all means I will not side with an unreasonable customer feeling know it all …

This article gives me hope that I’m not alone in believing that treating your employees well, instead of threatening them, will lead to the fantastic customer service that employers want.

“The customer is always right” is another way of saying “The guy with the money is always right.” When you look at how things usually work, in many (though not all) cases, someone who works in a certain business has a slightly lower income than people who are regular customers of that business. I couldn’t afford to regularly buy the produce of the organic farm I work on. Walmart employees can barely afford Walmart stuff. (Thankfully many businesses give employees discounts or extras to deal with this.) Add to that the way “the customer is always right” is instilled in both the worker and the customer, so that the customer feels entitled and the worker is trained to treat him as entitled, and you get this very creepy societal thing: people treating service employees like some kind of servant class or worse. If you go over to notalwaysright.com, there are examples of service employees being told “Oh, so you’re not a real person” by a customer who means “Oh, so you’re not a fellow customer”… and the person shows absolutely no awareness of what she just said.

On the other side, there’s a phenomenon that also happens: the business *using* a customer service employee to screw the customer. The CSR (or of course salesperson) is trained and given incentives to do things a certain way which the higher-ups know or hope will manipulate the customer into buying something higher-priced. Of course this is the case with telemarketers, but it happens in other situations as well. I remember a phone call with a phone company employee in which I was just trying to get basic no-frills local phone service and the CSR just kept telling me about these different phone plans, each quite complicated and set up in a way that prevented me from comparing the prices and choosing the cheapest. It took quite a long time. But I was not going to yell at the poor lady, I knew it was not by her own choice that she wouldn’t tell me “Oh here, this plan’s our basic cheapest one,” I could tell she was reading from a script. But it sucks, it just does; the people who wrote and enforced that script have put me in a position where I can’t figure out how to get basic cheap service, and her in a position where she is constantly (I’m sure) being yelled at by angry people for something that is not her fault.

THAT is why *I*’d rather deal with small business. At least the things people are doing are their own decisions or the decisions of people they see face to face. Which usually means they don’t try to jerk you around. In large corporations the field is way too open for people to sit in offices trying to figure out how to squeeze more money out of (to them) faceless people. Like you and me.

As for the hat incident, I would say, he is welcome to wear whatever he likes, say whatever he likes but he doesn’t have to fly with that particular airliner, and they don’t have to accept him. It’s about mutual respect.

On the other hand, there are people who take offence at the slightest thing (for example, a word or a phrase that someone says, or even where they come from, their religion, etc), which if acted on in their favour, is ridiculous. Whatever people say or believe, the fact is, we choose how we react to things. So, there needs to be balance, as usual.

Obviously “the customer is always right” hasn’t been around forever (just for a little over a century, something I didn’t know until I read this article!) so before that businesses existed and prospered on so many other things. The most important of which (the second that you bring on so much as one other person to work with or for you) is:

Your employees will MAKE YOU or they will BREAK YOU

This principal is so basic and so important that we have completely forgotten about its foundation.

I was feeling inspired, so I wrote about this article on my retail blog, which is from my perspective as someone who as been both a corporate employee as well as a business owner:

http://www.mynameisntmediumcoffee.com/2011/07/top-five-reasons-why-customer-is-always.html

If you feel inclined please check it, I would value your feedback