Is Customer always right?

In the early 20th century, Harry G. Selfridge of the department store, Selfridges in London, England, raised the slogan, “The customer is always right”. Since then marketers adopted this doctrine with wholehearted determination resulting in customers being accorded the status of a king.

However, today in 2020, as a seasoned professional of the field, I hold a different view. Customer is not King and Customer is not always right. 

Consider this. Have you ever been at a restaurant and observed another diner letting off steam at the waiter for serving a dish that did not match their taste or vision? The embarrassment that occurs makes one lose taste while being part of the ambience. At the same time, the customer appears to continue his tirade adding to the unpleasantness while a flurry of people rush about to placate him. In such cases usually, as other customers, we sympathise with the restaurant and not the complainant. This feeling is purely based on the fact that the person has crossed the limits of reasonable and decent behaviour at a public place.

The restaurant might have been at fault for not fulfilling their promise of serving good food, but at the same time customers also do not automatically inherit the right to adopt a rude and insulting attitude, especially when the party at the other end is apologetic and ready to compensate.

A similar kind of rude behaviour or nonsensical demands are faced by customer service representatives on a daily basis, either face to face or over the phone. Companies keep providing trainings to their teams on how to handle such customers. However, the big question that arises is: what about the customer?

Who is going to tell the customer that he does not have the right to talk or exhibit rudeness to those serving him? How is it that a customer is always right when in fact in certain situations, he is dishonest, pursuing an illegal outcome or acting in an immoral way. 

Therefore, in my opinion, at an individual level bad behaviour or unreasonable demands need to be checked on the spot without giving consideration to that innate fear of losing a customer. 

When it comes to dealing with a company, the situation becomes even worse. The single most common behaviour that every supplier faces is the delay of payment for the products or services he has rendered to the client company. When the client company issues a purchase order to his supplier, it serves as a contract between 2 companies to fulfil their obligations as per the terms agreed upon earlier. Hence, when a company fails to comply with their terms such as not making a payment as per the agreed terms, then it loses the right to demand anything further from the supplier. As observed, in majority of such cases, the client companies resort to black mailing tactics such as threatening to blacklist the supplier in their system or not making the payment at all. 

Such kinds of tactics or intimidating and bullying behaviour should not be tolerated under the pretext that "the customer is always right". A firm attitude needs to be adopted that indicates to the customer the resolve to provide solutions, if arguments are heard on both sides with calm and reason. Without reaching an agreement on the protocols or etiquettes of communication, all efforts to satisfy the customer should be dropped.

 From a marketer’s perspective, one can never undermine the importance of the customer. Therefore, it is better to adopt a policy of ‘Customer First’ than ‘Customer is always right’, since both parties involved have equal rights in such an engagement. This important relationship must be based on mutual trust and respect complemented with a desire to foster a long-term business commitment. 

Usman Ghani