"The Customer Is Always Right"

[GreyLord]

No one should ever take abuse.

Customer service is important though and is a dying art.

There used to be a thread the needle approach to dealing with upset or disgruntled folks.

Now, a lot of jerks will make a scene wanting free stuff or use BS to try to pull one on people. This seems heightened on social media. Not cool.

On the flip side, many businesses and companies are no longer serving the needs of their customers. It’s called enshitification. The make an experience worse on purpose to cut costs etc or they have decided they want different customers and treat the old ones poorly.

I see the way companies treat their customers and the increasing bad behavior of people to each other as the same root cause.

A breakdown of social norms of treating people with respect.

I have heard this and I have seen this.

I have noticed a trend in some ways, that companies that do not care for their employees, ultimately do not care for their customers.

For example, a company that decides to decrease it's workforce and gets rid of most of it's experienced customer service representatives, get's rid of most of it's quality control and expects the rest to take up all the work that the department used to do with triple the number...normally also decreases customer satisfaction.

It seems in some cases, it works both ways in making it worse for their employees while also making it worse for their customers.

 

[GreyLord]

Another part of the problem today, especially with corporations, is to see who the REAL customers are.

Take Hasbro for example. Some people love them. Some people hate them. Some people are confused at some of the choices being made. Are these choices really being made for the benefit of those who are buying their products?

Who are the REAL customers?

Some would say it's not those who are buying the toys, games, and other items made by Hasbro, but those who own the stocks. In this case, it really can be the customer is always right, because the actual customer owns the company. Of course, those customers can have squabbles and disagreements with each other, but at the end of the day, they are the one's who may truly be the ones served.

Thus, it's not those who play D&D or MtG that are the focus of what the company decides, but those who run the boardroom and are looking at the dividends at the end of the day who are the real customers.

At least, in some people's minds, today the REAL customers are not those in the retail space, but those above it. This causes a lot of decisions which seem counter intuitive if you are trying to cater to the customer, or even to treat your employees like valued members of a team. In the end, the ones they are truly catering to, are the ones that the retail visitors never actually see.

 

[dbm]

Always be nice to the enablers - receptionists, cleaners, baristas, sales staff. They make the wheels of the world turn more smoothly for everyone.

 

[TerraDave]

It’s the holiday season! A time when retail unpleasantness reaches its peak. I have been on both sides of it. Fortunately it’s been a long time since.

 

[The Soloist]

Times are hard with rising inflation and other world issues. We should all make an extra effort to be polite and nice to each other in our daily interactions. It's too easy to use that as an excuse to explode in people's faces.

When someone does that to me, my usual retort is: 'I hope you feel better now that you spat your venom.' I said that in a casual non-aggressive way. It bursts the aggressor's bubble. Some laugh, others say they are sorry.

Manners Maketh Man.

 

[FrogReaver]

I have worked retail for the last 28 years, the last 4 as a closing shift supervisor/manager-on-duty. The majority of customers who come into my workplace are okay. They get what they want, and I ring them up and send them on their way. There are, however, a minority who try to throw that saying around because they come in with a set of expectations and ignorance riding on their shoulders. They expect things to go their way and have a hard time accepting that's not how reality works.

I think there’s a fine line between having expectations and expecting to be treated fairly and with respect.

part of being treated fairly and with respect is being prompt in your resolutions. Not having me wait in a checkout line and then sending me to a customer service line to wait in another line. Not making me wait 10 mins on a manager in order to obtain a refund after the restaurant screwed up my order. Etc.

They also expect that as an employee you know things that they don't. Like why their coupon wasn't accepted by either your cash register or the self-serve kiosk machine. Trouble is, as an employee, you don't really know the answer to their problem any more than they do.

Who the heck’s job is it to know that? I mean seriously? If it’s not in your job description, it should be, or at least you should have a process that you can promptly refer to someone who is responsible for knowing that. That’s not an unreasonable customer question.

I think sometimes store employees view company policies as how things need to be done, when many times it’s the company policy that is the problem.

One of the upsides to being someone who works in retail is that you have been on both sides of the counter. You can relate to those behind the counter and treat them fairly, and you can relate to the customer if they had bad day of their own.

You also never know what all hoops the customer has already jumped through to try and fix the issue.

 

[Belen]

You also never know what all hoops the customer has already jumped through to try and fix the issue.

This.

I spent 3 hours and 3 cs reps yesterday trying to get Apple to add my son’s phone number to account recovery on his iPad.

The 2 reps were nice but knew nothing. The first one told me I had to get my son a new phone number because Apple had flagged his number as spam. I was, like, you’re a trillion dollar tech company that cannot unflag a number in your CMS or assist? I can do it in my system in 60 seconds. I was nice about it but I seemed to know more about tech than the rep. My son has a Verizon flip phone, not an iPhone.

The second rep asked a bunch of questions, then I told him about first rep and the 2nd said, ‘let me get a tech support supervisor.’

The third supervisor rep did a screen share and after 45 minutes and after I said for the 5th time that it was not an iPhone and I wanted it as a recovery option, the guy finally said, ‘oh, it it not an iPhone number, you cannot add it to your account there, you have to add it to a completely different area that none of our materials tell you about.’

That finally solved it.

I was nice to the reps but so angry when I got off the phone. 3 hours of research and phone and chat support. It was insane.

Let’s not get started on companies replacing cs reps with useless robot chat attendants and getting rid of phone numbers so you can never get to a person.

 

[FrogReaver]

This.

I spent 3 hours and 3 cs reps yesterday trying to get Apple to add my son’s phone number to account recovery on his iPad.

The 2 reps were nice but knew nothing. The first one told me I had to get my son a new phone number because Apple had flagged his number as spam. I was, like, you’re a trillion dollar tech company that cannot unflag a number in your CMS or assist? I can do it in my system in 60 seconds. I was nice about it but I seemed to know more about tech than the rep. My son has a Verizon flip phone, not an iPhone.

The second rep asked a bunch of questions, then I told him about first rep and the 2nd said, ‘let me get a tech support supervisor.’

The third supervisor rep did a screen share and after 45 minutes and after I said for the 5th time that it was not an iPhone and I wanted it as a recovery option, the guy finally said, ‘oh, it it not an iPhone number, you cannot add it to your account there, you have to add it to a completely different area that none of our materials tell you about.’

That finally solved it.

I was nice to the reps but so angry when I got off the phone. 3 hours of research and phone and chat support. It was insane.

Let’s not get started on companies replacing cs reps with useless robot chat attendants and getting rid of phone numbers so you can never get to a person.

You are very lucky you finally got someone that just knew that. Also note the lie the first one told you about the reason why, most likely to just get you off the phone or chat so the call didn’t tank his performance stats.

 

[Belen]

You are very lucky you finally got someone that just knew that. Also note the lie the first one told you about the reason why, most likely to just get you off the phone so the call didn’t tank his performance.

I know.

I am not getting my kid a freakin smart phone just to add a recovery number.

Even the iPad is locked down to not allow any app I do not approve on it.

The kid gets a smart phone when he has a job and can pay for it. Social media is a cancer.

 

[Morrus]

I think it’s weird you went right to this. “The customer is always right” is a business philosophy about giving people what they want, rather than what you want to provide. Adapt to the desires of your customers. It has nothing to do with tolerating a-holes.

Originally, sure. It's not how the phrase is typically wielded these days.