The customer is not always right...

Yup.


But in the interest of making sales, keeping a customer and the gossip train.... they're always right.

i've been in customer service for over 10 years. I have trained customer service and technical support, and most of whom i have trained came in with the incorrect notion that "the customer is always right." It's not the case, and no company I have worked for ever advocated that we take that approach. I have always stressed courtesy, a willingness to assist and educating the customer, but not blowing smoke up his/her *** to make them think they were right.

as a customer, i know i am not always right, and most people think this, too. In fact, in my experience, if you have a customer that says "the customer is always right" to you, they are the ones who know they are the most wrong. because they are quoting some outdated mantra as their sole defense.

I agree!! Nothing irks me more than an irate customer being abusive and quoting "but the customer is always right" line of crap.

I work at a finance company. You can imagine the quality of calls we receive if funds aren't being sent or items are being charged back.

I owned my own business for a while. I had a higher-end business that catered more to people with money. What I learned about all this is that often there is a mis-match between what a company offers, and the expectations of the customers. This typically happens a lot in retail, since any dub@$$ in the world can walk in. I have experience with retail, but it seems like it would be difficult.

For other businesses though, they sometimes bring it on themselves. I paid for a one-year hosting solution based on an add that they set-up for you and it's easy. After I paid on-line because that's how you had to do it, they started asking me for this really heavy technical information. I was like, WTF are you talking about. They really didn't want to explain, and acted like I was an idiot because I don't know what a DNS redirect means, or whatever. I got so pissed off with them, I demanded my money back. It wasn't easy, it wasn't friendly, it sucked and was a little bit demoralizing. When a place advertises, they need to stand behind it. If it's a bare bones operation, don't advertise like a full service, customer friendly place, and visa versa.

Companies often set themselves up for failure and make the cusomter support job difficult becasue they just try to get cusomters in the door, rather than work hard to get the RIGHT cusomters in the door.

One day, remind me to tell you my fish story. it's perfect for this.

I owned my own business for a while. I had a higher-end business that catered more to people with money. What I learned about all this is that often there is a mis-match between what a company offers, and the expectations of the customers.

Why? Salesmen seem to open that gap.

Amen. To all of this. I work in retail. Some people... >.<

I have worked in retail also and thought they were bad

then I got into the broadband business...lol boy was i wrong about retail..lol

unfortunately they are always right, even when they are wrong That's a hard thing to take, especially when you do what I do for a living, decorating cakes. Some people can be really picky, but they have a right to.

Remember, the customer is always right... (Except when they are wrong, which is ALWAYS)
I've worked in retail since leaving Sixth Form and it's made me lose all faith in humanity...