Right or Wrong: Customers

[Mayhemski]

My old manager said this:

"The customer may not always be right but they are STILL the customer"

That's the biggest problem I think - lots of companies forget that they still need the customer, and don't consider the individual customer important just the volume of customers.

And coupled with the current lack of trust many companies place in the there customer service staff to resolve issues it's a nasty combo currently.

Personally I'm currently looking at the 2 meters of popped bubble wrap from a day on the phone to BT, so yeah I agree service can be poor, frustrating, red-mist inducing - gah the twitch is coming back....happy thoughts...

 

[elvor0]

No, because in most cases the customer has no idea what they're on about, if I ran a shop, I'd just run it like Bernard Black from Black Books. Ahh if only, bastard customers.

I wish they did still follow it, this year me and my house-mates have been completely screwed by Virgin Media, we have 50mb broadband and were told that average speeds in our area were in the mid-fourties. What they neglected to tell us until we'd signed up to the 12 month contract and rung them up for technical issues was that speeds over about 20mb are apparently impossible over a wireless connection, at-least with the box they provide. With 5 internet-heavy users living in the same house, this is definitely noticable. Fuck those Usain Bolt / Richard Branson adverts where they promise to double subscriber's speeds, we just want the speed we paid for. Not only that, but now apparently monthly prices are going up by a couple of quid and how that works with a pre-arranged contract I don't know.

TLR: people above who say the customer is usually wrong or an arse are talking out of their behinds, companies should learn to respect their customers again. Oh and don't go with Virgin Media.

What has that got to do with you being "right"? If you can't get speeds faster than that, you can't get speeds faster than that. This isn't a case of you saying "this router doesn't work" and customer service saying "yes it does", it's a case of the area not having speeds that fast.

Long story short: yes.

It is dying.

Makes you appreciate the ones who stick to it, though.

Why? In most cases the customer usually isn't right, even then there's only a few cases where the customer being "right" would actually come into play outside of standard stuff you buy. If you're going to a electronics, pc or hardware (etc) shop, in most cases the shopkeeper should be better versed than most customers, if the customer is wrong about something, why should the shopkeeper agree with him just to play by some bizzare social edict? In fact, if I'm wrong the shopkeeper should correct me, for not only will I get the thing that I actually need rather than the thing I decided I needed, I'll be better off for it.

 

[putowtin]

The customer is always right (they just don't need to know) however the main problem with retail these days is the stores policy regarding customers, that's what?s wrong.

You hate been followed around in a store? being bugged to take out a store card/loyalty card? the sales assistant trying to sell you extra stuff at the checkout? All their doing is following the stores policy, trying to meet ridiculous sales targets and hoping that their shop won't be one of the 14 a day closing in the UK everyday (sorry don't know US closure rates).

Yes it sucks when you get bad service in a shop, but for minimum wage it's hard to keep a smile on your face when having to put up with the corporate bullcrap involved in every shop these days, as well as customers screaming at you over the smallest problem (when I worked at EB, a woman swore at me and threatened to come back at closing time to "deal with me" because we'd run out of pokemon cards).

 

[Me55enger]

Well im a paying customer of Gamersfirst, as my brother and I play APB.

they perma banned my brother wrongly, and as such tyring to communicate this to the bunch of fucknuggets has been the wrong side of impossible.

So yes, the customer is no longer right, nor respected.

Long Live Capitalism.

 

[Candidus]

I'll tell you what OP, on behalf of a lot of people. I know I don't care about axioms. I used to do 8 hours a day 5 days a week, before I realised what a chronic waste of life the labour exchange is and managed to get out without losing too much. I know that 8 hours is too long to spend pretending that someone elses' feelings, problems and needs actually matter to me when I'm just trying to pay the bills.

Most of us are there, at work, to do a passable job and get paid so that we can go back to our lives. 'Our lives' being a portion of time in which we basically don't include the hours sold into employment.

No money is worth smiling like an aspie when we'd rather have a neutral expression. No money is worth softening our voice or sugaring our words or bending over backwards when we'd rather just tell people how it is and get rid of them.

That's just the way it is now. I for one approve.

 

[fletch_talon]

In retail:

The customer is not was not and never will be "always" right.
The customer is very frequently wrong. Or to put it more accurately many customers are sometimes wrong.

People say that businesses are all about their own interests, forgetting that customers and people in general are also going to be thinking about themselves.

In fact businesses have to worry about the customer's interest in order to make profits, whereas a customer has nothing to lose by arguing but plenty to potentially gain.

A business has a lot more to lose by being wrong than the customer. Hence why if it gets to the stage where a business is saying you're wrong, its more than likely that you're wrong.

"The customer is always right" is an attitude which only encourages scumbags to yell the phrase out when you won't give in to their stupid demands.
A better saying would be "When in doubt, keep the customer happy".

 

[Antitonic]

"The customer is always right"? What a crock. My first day on the job, I got the "correct" version.

"The customer is almost never right. They ARE almost always stupid."

I see far too many people on a daily basis prove this. You practically have to treat them like children. You know your products better than they do, and you have to guide them to what they need. Never let a person's ignorance make you think you can take advantage of them. Karma can be a powerful thing.

 

[zelda2fanboy]

The adage still exists if you walk into a retail store. If you're irritating enough, people will do anything to not have to deal with you anymore. It could be why brick and mortar retail is falling behind. People ***** and get free stuff all the time. If you get pissy over the phone, they can just hang up on you.

 

[RagTagBand]

I work in retail and not only are customers almost always wrong, they usually do not accept that they are wrong and will insist, despite evidence, that YOU are wrong/incompetent.

My managers also openly tell us that "The customer is not always right".

I hear people say, all the time, that people are assholes on the internet because they're anonymous and aren't face to face with the person they're being rude to.

Bullshit.

People are assholes, Period. Not only am I 10 times more likely to encounter an asshole than a nice person while i'm working, People are ruder to me face to face than anyone has ever been to me on the internet.

 

[Duskwaith]

"The customer is always right" is pretty much 1950s propoganda for stores.

As some one seen as bottom of the food chain of a Supermarket retailer's career chain people do think just because you work in said place that you are beneath them and therefore your sole existance is to cater to their every need.

People are mostly rude,stupid,arrogant and lacking, the not so common, common sense

 

[JoJo]

I wish they did still follow it, this year me and my house-mates have been completely screwed by Virgin Media, we have 50mb broadband and were told that average speeds in our area were in the mid-fourties. What they neglected to tell us until we'd signed up to the 12 month contract and rung them up for technical issues was that speeds over about 20mb are apparently impossible over a wireless connection, at-least with the box they provide. With 5 internet-heavy users living in the same house, this is definitely noticable. Fuck those Usain Bolt / Richard Branson adverts where they promise to double subscriber's speeds, we just want the speed we paid for. Not only that, but now apparently monthly prices are going up by a couple of quid and how that works with a pre-arranged contract I don't know.

TLR: people above who say the customer is usually wrong or an arse are talking out of their behinds, companies should learn to respect their customers again. Oh and don't go with Virgin Media.

What has that got to do with you being "right"? If you can't get speeds faster than that, you can't get speeds faster than that. This isn't a case of you saying "this router doesn't work" and customer service saying "yes it does", it's a case of the area not having speeds that fast.

It's to do with the company being deceptive to the customer, we specifically asked about the typical speed we could expect (not the maximum possible speed) when purchasing the service and they claimed a speed which is over twice that which is possible using the equipment they sold us. It's nothing to do with our area, we can get the full speed through a wired connection, they are selling wireless boxes that aren't up to the job.

 

[Lilani]

-snip-

It really depends on the situation. When I worked at Disney World, whatever we did was always about the customer, even when they were in the wrong. For example, if we believed the customer had given us fake money, we were supposed to take the money, get as good of a look at them as we could, then as soon as they're out of earshot immediately call our managers and tell them we "had too much change." Then they would show up with Disney security and take things from there. Even though we were addressing a possible crime, the process of dealing with it was as non-invasive as possible.

I did have to tell people some things that ruined their day, though. I worked at the Magic Kingdom, and MK has no alcohol, as per Walt Disney's vision of what the park should be like. Not a day went by that I didn't have to tell at least one person "I'm sorry, there is no alcohol here." Some people would laugh, thinking it was a joke. But then I'd have to explain to them no, for real, there is no alcohol in the Magic Kingdom. Then they would whine and huff and puff and act like I had just thrown their phone into the Seven Seas Lagoon.

Smoking was a major pet peeve of mine, too. There are smoking areas in the park. They are marked clearly on the map, there are signs which show where they begin and end, and every cast member in the park knows where they are. And yet some people will still try to sneak them. I sort of became the resident cigarette detector at whatever stand I was working at. People would always try to smoke them in crowds during parade time, but it was easy to spot them either by the puffs of smoke during the day or the glowing end of it at night. They also tried to hide in corners and casually lean over fences or the edges of bridges. I would seek them out and make them put them out every time. It's just ridiculous--some people get severely agitated by that smoke and will explicitly avoid the smoking areas of the park. We even had some cast members we couldn't send to certain stands because they were close to smoking areas. Plus it's just rude to everyone else around you who expect to not be inhaling someone else's smoke. So needless to say when some jerk decides he just can't get his lazy ass over to one of the nearly dozen smoking areas in the park, I get a little irritated.

 

[KiloFox]

I work in customer service and FYI 95% of the time the customer is either an ass or an idiot. So no, the customer is not always right.

THIS this this and more this... i used to work customer service as well and i HATED IT (as everyone who works Customer Service does) because, not of the work in general, but because of the customers. the customer is not always right, in fact, most of the time the customer is WRONG flat out no questions asked. and when you try and be polite saying "no sir that's not how it works now if you let me explain..." they interrupt you and become an ass spouting "NO I'M RIGHT BECAUSE THE CUSTOMER IS ALWAYS RIGHT blah-de-blah"as a result a lot of people working customer service become very bitter and eventually forego being polite and just assume the customer is an imbecile who dosn't know what the hell they're talking about because for the majority of the time that's true. customer service (in my experience) also gets paid pretty low and is a pretty much thankless job. i cold count the number of times i got thanked on a customer service job on the hands of a quadruple-amputee... (that is to say i NEVER got thanked)

i think that this is all because a singular person can be very smart, but people as a whole are generally a crowd of entitled idiots. (Men In Black put it very well http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkCwFkOZoOY ) also because the customer that IS right, dosn't bother you because he/she already knows what to do. they know where in the store to look for their crap, they know how to troubleshoot the equipment, and they know enough not to need to bother customer service. this is usually because they read the instructions, or they just have innate-know-how about that sort of thing, or because they're experienced. so all that is left to trickle down for customer service to handle is the dumbass entitled idiots (yes i know i called them dumb twice they're THAT bad) that make our lives difficult.

so the next time you need to call customer service or deal with an employee that works with other people... for the love of whatever gods you may or may not believe in BE NICE TO THEM. because they have enough shit to deal with without you adding to their problems. and they deserve it. they're helping you out for godsakes...

also keep in mind that when you have to ask somebody for help/answers... that means YOU DON'T KNOW SOMETHING ABOUT IT and ergo CANNOT BE RIGHT (or at least the chances are very slim)

remember if i seemed hostile writing this, it's because i worked customer service and it's just that aggrivating

 

[ThePS1Fan]

It should be dead. Mostly because of the people who seem to think it isn't and don't care about how the person helping them feels they just want everything their way even that's not possible.

 

[Imperioratorex Caprae]

"The customer is always..." AN ASSHOLE!

That should be the real quote. The older saying is just an excuse for entitlists to get their way. Its not particularly true in any sense because you can't have a blanket statement entitling one party to always be right and the other to accede to the first party's wishes.
This creates an imbalance that subsequently can hamper a business model pretty quickly. If the customer were always right, then if said customer believed or wanted x-product to sell at y-low price then the business owner would have to cut the price down to whatever the customer wanted, whether it was fair or not. Same as if a customer believes he/she was ripped off for a product (usually misinformed or underinformed due to lack of due diligence on the customer's part not the business) and then said customer demands either a full refund or free product despite the store policy on said products being non-refundable (which customer should have known by reading the reciept he/she is waving around like a madman/woman).
No, the customer isn't always right. Its conditional, like any aspect of life in general. Pandering to the whiny entitlsts who believe they have rights to get whatever they want no matter how unreasonable is one more reason why people are lazy as hell these days.

 

[Waaghpowa]

I wouldn't say it's dying because I don't believe it was ever true to begin with. Most of the time the customer is either:

A) misinformed
B) Ignorant
C) Condescending
D) Plain stupid
E) Stubborn
F) A Shameless thief who tries to rip everyone off
G) A liar

The list goes on

I will borrow a plaque from a CAD comic to sum up my feelings.

 

[xDarc]

I fail to see how a jingoism from the 60's applies to today's average poorly educated, no-class, broke-ass consumer.

Only quoting to point out the phrases origins was closer to the 1860s than 1960s As for its relevance it is insanely relevant and I will explain below.

The phrase was first used in print in a 1908 article in the Kansas City Star.

It didn't have much relevance until the post-war period where consumers had A) money and B) pent up demand.

Back then it was the customer is always right. Today it's the right customer is always right.

The average consumer is not what they used to be. Wages are lower adjusted for inflation, costs of living are higher, disposable income isn't there in a lot of cases- so a lot of customers just aren't worth it. Today, it's all about treating the customers who have money to spend right- and letting everyone else be passed around like a two dollar whore; letting them go from bank to bank, store to store, knowing they'll be back.

I didn't make it that way, that's the way it is. What the customer needs to do about it, is stop being so stupid, ignorant, and falling back on things like I don't read this or that, or I don't look at my statements. Too bad, that's your responsibility and you deserve to get taken for a ride if you haven't learned after two plus decades of companies behaving this way. There is no excuse for it.

The only customers who still cling to this dusty bullshit is baby boomers, the most annoying whiny generation ever. You tell a 20 year old kid why his account is overdrawn and he just sits there and takes it because he knows, shit- i should have paid more attention to my finances. It's only gonna get worse from here.

 

[esperandote]

Customers are always right on their presence, behind their backs they are fucking morons.

 

[chadachada123]

The customer is more-often-than-not wrong. That said, I think that cashiers should have the right, at least once per month, to tell a customer where to shove it if they are absolutely completely wrong but won't realize it. That would have made my year as a cashier far less stressful.

I've got this long story that I don't feel like typing, but long-story-short, I was called "arrogant" for standing politely and listening to this lady yell at me for something that both wasn't my fault, wasn't even a problem, and was completely outside of my control, and then smiling in response to her bitchy attitude. I hope she gets fucked with a metal rake.

Funnily, I actually got praise from my supervisors for handling it as maturely as I did. Most cashiers would have said something snappy or would have gotten angry at her. Instead, I just smiled deeply and put myself in La-La land. Good times.

 

[manic_depressive13]

TLR: people above who say the customer is usually wrong or an arse are talking out of their behinds, companies should learn to respect their customers again. Oh and don't go with Virgin Media.

Forgive me for asking but have you ever worked in retail or customer service? Just because you were right in your example doesn't mean that the vast majority of customers aren't full of shit.