Leaders: The Customer Isn’t Always Right

By. Matt Monge

Buck up and stand up for your teammates. That was the gist of one of the points in this post and a couple comments below it. As leaders, we can’t be so quick to cower when a customer pitches a fit in our lobby, shrieking at the top of his lungs about how the customer is always right blah blah blah…

I’m not saying the customer isn’t right sometimes. Of course they’re right sometimes. And when those times come, we need to open and own up to our mistake. We’re human, after all; we’re going to make them. I’m just saying that customers aren’t always right. I mean, seriously. In what other context can any human claim with a straight face that they are literally incapable of being wrong? It’s silliness I tell you. Silliness.

I could do a whole post or twelve about that, but that’s not the point of today’s post. I think leaders have an opportunity here. It’s not like any of the parties involved actually think that customers are always right. You don’t think that. Your team doesn’t think that. Heck, the customers don’t even think that. They just know that somewhere along the way, some nincompoop coined that stupid phrase and employees have been beaten over the head with it and managers have cowered behind it ever since.

It plays out something like this:

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