The (‘Not So’) Righteous Clients

“The customer is always right”- Harry Gordon Selfridge

“Grahak Devta Hota Hai”, that was the first time I saw those lines which were the Hindi equivalent of “The customer is the king”, in essence that meant that customer is right in all his demands and reasoning. It was back in my childhood days (Early 90s), while visiting the garments shop in the local bazaar. The shopkeeper had those four golden words put on a sticker, right above his chair. Although, the way he dealt with customers didn't feel very godly, but, I was too naive to understand the true meaning of this pervasive industry cliche.

Next time I came across the concept of customers, their righteousness and the need to make them feel valued was during my MBA classes. It was for a course of ‘Customer Service Management’, and I grasped only what was necessary to get me through the course. Nothing more, nothing less. It was all theoretical concept for me back then. It wasn't until I started working in my current profile, doing extensive support, that I came to fully (Or, at least I think that I fully understand what I have understood so far) understand the PROs and CONs of this approach.

Now, I am not denying that customer can be right. He can be right. He can be wrong. He can be partially right or wrong. But a “Customer is always right”, only in an ideal world, not in the real world in which companies and services operate. At best, the customer has an illusion of being right and the corporations feed to it to get more value out of them. But, today I am not discussing the grand ‘evil’ plans of the corporations. We will just be focusing on why customer may not be right, always! I will try and point to some of the not so ‘right’ customer practices, which I have come across personally.

1. Because some customers spell ‘Doom’ for your business.
   Customers don’t often practice high integrity (I don’t mean to generalize, but it still holds true for at least 0.1% of customers). I have dealt with customers who will always be ready to grab the freebies and offers, but as soon as that honeymoon is over, they will either rant about your worthlessness or about the ‘crappy’ service. It’s best to get rid of such customers early on (Totally my personal take on the matter).
2. Why you no read?
   Terms of service and policies are highlighted and showed for a reason on most web services. Not reading the mentioned refund policies, or the stipulated time frame for refunds and then coming back to fight for your negligence, doesn't make you sound too right.
3. The cheap. The ill mannered. The uncouthly
   Just because you are using a service, or at most paying for it, doesn't give you a right to be abusive or act like a total d**k with their employees (Being a jerk to some extent is fine, though. Been there, done that). With the present age and technology, companies like ‘Uber’, providers of the luxury cab service, don’t just ask users for rating the drivers, but, they also ask drivers to rate the customers. So, depending upon how good or bad you were as a customer, they may choose not to offer the service to you. Moral of the story- Want better service? Be a better customer.
4. Community First, Single User Later.
   In my present, as well as past experiences, there have been times when due to insufficient reach or popularity of a feature or a service, it needs to be deprecated. And, while the company does send proper communication and offers remedial solutions to those inconvenienced by this move, there will always be a handful of ‘feature expert’ users who will suddenly have their lives turned upside down due to this move, and would then proceed to try and arm twist the companies to compensate for their ‘supposed’ losses.
   What they don’t realize is that while it may be a temporary inconvenience, in majority of the cases, the companies are always trying to improve the product and offer a better or an improved version of the feature in the next revamp cycle. And, this shall be beneficial to a larger community of users. There is not much you can do to help the ‘feature/product specific’ customers, except to offer the best possible settlement and let them go for now and hope they will realize the value and come back on-board.
5. Customer maybe right, but, only if the employee says so!
   While, it is important to make the customer feel valued, but, not at the cost of employee morale. If the corporations want the employees to deliver outstanding customer service, they need to empower them and trust them to make the right decisions. Decisions, which at times may not favor the customer. Because sometimes, a company may have to choose between an irate customer who demands free subscription because your site was under massive spam attack and was down for 15 minutes, or an employee, who works with you everyday to make the product what it is.

In conclusion, I must clarify that being in a support role, I am delighted in my interaction and dealing with 99% of the customers and try to offer them a meaningful experience with any product or service, or at least give them a satisfactory response to their queries. But, there are times, when a customer feels they are right in their demands, clearly oblivious to the fact that they are not. It’s at times like these, where you will need to judge the merit of the case and uphold (Or Not!) their belief, that they’re right. Treat them the way you would want to be treated, even if you were not right. And, let us just keep it between you and me, that the customer is not always right!