Last month, Alex Kjerulf posted a reprinted entry about how the philosophy of “The customer is always right” is wrong.  I couldn’t agree with him more.  This is not a statement of “The customer is always wrong”, but rather a reasonable demonstration about how people are not entitled to everything just because they feel they have been wronged or are more important than someone else.  I’ll break down my analysis and relation to my employment by his groupings:

1. Keeping employees happy should be on the same level as keeping customers happy.  Unhappy employees are generally not going to be beneficial to gaining customer approval and loyalty.  When customers are unreasonable, rude, and abusive and management sides with the customer (assuming the employee/employer have not done anything to justify the behavior) it breeds frustration and anger.  How can employees make decisions and judgement calls in good faith if some unreasonable prick decides to explode and get a higher-up to agree that the employee did something wrong when that is clearly not the case?  Employees are not perfect, but when they are right, supervisors should back them up 100%.  The customer is not going to be present 40 hours a week working to build more faith and loyalty in the company.  The employee is, and that one employee with 40 hours of customer-facing time every week can cause a lot of trouble if a reason (justified or not.)
2. Why does “the squeaky wheel gets the grease” mean that the unreasonable prick gets rewarded for bad behavior when the loyal, trustworthy customers who consistently return to the business get “standard” service?  If there is an issue with a service business, then of course a company should go out of its way to correct the problem.  If Joe Schmoe has owned three X brand music players, dropped two in water and one off of a cliff while rock climbing, his complaints about the reliability of the product do not justify replacement or service for free or under warranty.  Claiming “the customer is always right” is a perfect way to morph what is in reality a klutzy customer into one who has purchased three “lemons” and is mulling class action lawsuits for defective merchandise.  Abrasive customers who are not justified in their bad behavior should not be rewarded.
3. Nobody wants to admit that they don’t want a customer.  The short story is this: not everyone is worth the effort.  Just like who you choose to associate with on a social and personal basis, there are customers who you may want to associate with to “keep up business” but who will cause more problems in the long run.  Happy employees will treat customers consistently well, and those customers will in return treat the business well.  When customers are abusive without cause, businesses should elect to cease the relationship before it causes problems with the way other customers are treated.  Which brings me to point 4.
4. It is said that when employees are put first, they in turn put customers first.  When employees are happy, they give better customer service because they truly care about the customer, they have energy and motivation to care about the customer and that creates better overall interactions.  Employees who feel they are not valued will be worried about being second-guessed by management on trivial, black and white decisions because appeasement is the best way to work with an unreasonable customer.  When the employee is not worrying about being fired for having a bad couple of months selling, or having unreasonable pricks sending negative feedback about a good employee (I think this is called “transference”), their performance will improve.  Putting up with everything is not a good thing.
5. The situation mentioned in the context of some customers just being wrong is the case of a guy whose kid is wearing a hat with Nazi and KKK insignia on it.  They are both on a plane, and other passengers were uncomfortable with it.  He was asked to put away the hat, and he refused, until the first officer came back to him and explained federal regulations and other policies regarding interfering with a flight crew.  The customer’s view is that he bought a ticket to fly, and he was going to fly no matter what.  You know what?  Give the customer his money back, and tell him not to fly.  Obviously, the services were rendered, so the customer shouldn’t be refunded.  Why should every other customer on the plane be uncomfortable and frustrated because of one unreasonable prick?  If you want to start (or fly on) Nazi World Airlines, please do.  I won’t give you any of my money, though.

I’ve seen people who erase their hard drives given free backup hard drives because they complained about not having enough warning that they were about to do something stupid.  I’ve seen people who sit their fat asses on their X brand music player, bending the metal case, crushing the hard drive, then given free replacements because someone had the audacity to claim that the minor damage that happened 6 months ago had anything to do with their completely unrelated problem now.

What is especially fun are customers who are appeased for their misbehavior who then provide negative feedback about an employee for their supposed wrongdoing.  When the employee then has to discuss with their supervisor why people are complaining about them, any mention of the customer’s legitimate issues (that being something like liquid damage or snapping the LCD off of their laptop) looks like an uncaring or difficult employee rather than a vindictive, difficult customer.

Businesses should stop idolizing the Neville Chamberlain appeasement-at-any-cost philosophy and get with the Winston Churchill use-your-big-brass-ones-when-needed philosophy instead.