The Customer Is Always Right

The other day I overheard a leader say the "customer isn't always right ". The conversation reminded me of how I think about these words as they make up one of my favorite sayings. What "The Customer Is Always Right" means to me is not that we blindly agree with everything our customers tell us, but understand that at the moment our customers are telling us their situation they believe they are right. This change to our listening focus means we have to actually listen to the customer and not start solving the problem before we understand it. If we truly listen to the customer we can understand the situation and then we can explain how there might be a misunderstanding or they have incomplete understanding or information or they may actually be correct. The customer is always right means listen.