Is the customer always right? Is the client always right The client is always right VKontakte

"The customer is always right" - this phrase seems to have been around since the very moment the word "customer" itself appeared.

However, the principles of respect for their customers, or guests, or visitors have always existed. They were self-evident. The service sector at all times implied the idea of ​​customer orientation, because such important things for any company as profit, reputation, image depend on it. If at least one visitor to the restaurant leaves it dissatisfied, then he is unlikely to return there himself, and certainly will not recommend this place to his friends.

The phrase itself still has its own history. It was in this form that it was first uttered in 1909 by Harry Gordon Selfridge, the founder of a network of stores, in fact, Gordon Selfridge. He chose "the customer is always right" as the slogan for his department stores.

Rumor has it that this phrase has a twin brother. The Swiss Cesar Ritz used a different saying for his hotel chain - "the client is never wrong." However, never say never. Perhaps that is why the Selfridge version took root :)

Nowadays, demonstrating to customers the company's position that it will always be on their side is a common thing. Whether this is actually the case is another question.

Typically, if an organization claims "the customer is always right," it is pursuing one of two goals:

1. Convince customers that they will get good service from this company.

2. Persuade employees to provide good customer service.

And only a few are ready to really break into a cake for the sake of their consumers. Although, this is for the best, with such a development of events and thoughtlessly following the whims of your clients, you can simply find yourself in the red.

Why is this phrase dangerous for companies?

“The customer is always right” is a rather sly phrase, you see. However, that hasn't stopped it from becoming a cult classic and becoming a mantra that many business owners love to use. Indeed, at first glance, it shows that the company is completely customer-oriented, which means that service is at the head of the table. The buyer will never be rude and will be polite, help him with any difficulty or problem that has arisen.

In itself, customer focus is a good trait for a company. But the phrase “the customer is always right” cannot be taken literally and turn everything into fanaticism and run to change the product for the client if he saw a speck of dust on it or broke and ruined it himself, and now he is trying to accuse you of all mortal sins.

The main thing in such situations is to objectively look at the problem that has arisen, try to help the client, but at the same time not lose face either in front of the client or in front of the employee.

However, some companies make this rule central to their customer experience. Surely you have at least once seen the phrase "If you were not given a check, then your purchase is at the expense of the store." And some delivery services promise that they will return the entire amount of the order to the client if the courier brings the food later than an hour and a half.

On the one hand, the buyer can be guaranteed to receive his dinner just in time, and on the other hand, such a rule can make the business unprofitable. After all, the courier may be late and not through his own fault and not through the fault of the cook who prepared the order. Traffic jams due to snow removal or due to an accident, repair of the roadway are the reasons that do not depend on the delivery service, so it is difficult to use this rule. It might be worth discounting your next order, but paying in full for your current order is a thoughtless and stupid decision.

Many managers or administrators immediately take the side of the client, they do not want to figure out what happened between the seller and the client and what is the essence of the conflict that has arisen. But if the manager immediately takes the side of the client, it turns out that he does not care about the opinion of the employee. And if “the customer is always right”, then “the employee is always wrong”. Moreover, it is always easier to be guided by cliches and stereotypes than by an independent decision and analysis of the situation.

Sometimes the fear of getting a dissatisfied client or even losing him overshadows the fear of losing your employees who do not want to work in a team where they are not appreciated at all. No employee will go out of his way for those customers who do not appreciate them.

However, it’s also not worth “shielding” your employees in case of a real mistake. If an obvious miscalculation is made on the part of the service, then you need to apologize and try to maintain a good relationship with the client. And with the employee to talk and, if necessary, reprimand. After all, no one has yet canceled the human factor.

What are the clients

Clients who really know what they are talking about

These are easier to work with. Sometimes. They set clear goals, can assess the level of their implementation and respect your work. True, it is incredibly difficult to argue with them. For all your arguments, they will find no less reasoned of their own.

However, in any case, you are doing a common thing, and if both parties understand this, finding a compromise will not be a problem.

Curious Clients

They are still not at all sure that they will work with you, they want to “just look”. So, as a rule, free examples are needed. If you do any work for them, they may disappear without a trace or say that they did not like it. And after a while, who knows, you will see how a site with an “unsuccessful” design functions successfully. In other words, time is wasted.

Very active clients (not to be confused with the first type)

Very very. They constantly call and offer their options. Such clients often distract from the process itself, showing hundreds of examples of “successful” design or asking a million questions. Usually it takes more time to communicate with them than the order itself.

don't care

On the one hand, ideal clients. They trust you completely and allow you to make decisions. On the other hand, they are usually laconic and give you a minimum of necessary information.

Well, for dessert - inadequate customers

They always remind you of their superiority, and you should be happy that you communicate with him. In this case, you cannot avoid constant nit-picking and harsh criticism addressed to you. For them, the result of the work, alas, is more important than your good health.

Clients are very different, and with any you need to be able to communicate correctly. After all, the efficiency of your company depends on this, whatever one may say. Which, do not forget this, and is aimed at satisfying the needs of your beloved customers. Such is the vicious circle.

How to effectively communicate with each other?

Argument your point of view.

It doesn't matter who you are - the contractor or the client. If you think that you are right, then discard emotions and prove reasoned why. You can’t “pressure with authority” and throw phrases: “yes, we have already done so many projects” or “well, we know our audience best.”

Prepare a thorough review of any work you do or ask to be done. You should not do the work on the principle of “it will do”, it is better to figure out what is wrong and what the client’s wishes are. At the same time, the customer must also communicate correctly and listen to the arguments of the employee. To exaggerate and dramatize in situations of misunderstanding is more than wrong.

Some clients are wrong

They may accuse you of wearing the wrong color shirt. Or require you to do work at night on a weekend. Or maybe they even refuse to pay for being served by a different manager than usual. In this case, you need to completely forget about the phrase “the customer is always right.” It’s better to stop working with such people, they like to dramatize and throw tantrums on empty place, just for self-assertion.

Of course, if this client is extremely important to you, make concessions. But know that he can take advantage of his position in the future.

Learn to admit your mistakes

If you made a mistake and gave the client not what he asked for, honestly admit it and apologize. So you save your reputation and, possibly, the client. The main thing is to adequately recognize the oversight and do not humiliate yourself in front of every buyer.

Know your worth

Taking into account the wishes of customers is one thing, but allowing them to “get into” every stage of work is another thing entirely. There is a certain type of people who want to control your every move. They believe that if they paid you money, then they can do with you and the task - whatever their heart desires. Mark the distance immediately so that there is no misunderstanding later

improvise

You should not try to somehow classify all cases of behavior between clients or performers. After all, each of them is a special case.

The client is sometimes right, but certainly not in all cases. After all, if he is “always right,” then employees will suffer, and the most ill-mannered customers will receive undeserved privileges. This means that the service will only get worse. When a company puts employees at the forefront, they serve customers better, because they do not worry about themselves, but think first of all about the client. In addition, they are more motivated to work efficiently.

You can’t protect customers all the time, such a strategy will show employees that they are not very valuable to the company. No employee wants to put up with the fact that customers can do literally whatever they want.

First of all, you need to invest in employees and protect them from unfounded claims. Do not forget that customers come and go, but valuable personnel remain and bring real profit.

"The customer is always right!" - issued by Harry Selfridge in 1909. So he showed the whole of London what a wonderful and customer-oriented service is in his department stores. And for 108 years now, this thought has been spreading like a virus.

Puzzle English told Rusbase about 5 reasons why customers and Mr. Selfridge can't always be right, and how fulfilling all the wishes of customers destroys the business from the inside.

We note right away that we are not against this statement, but with the amendment that the client is right in his choice.

When a manufacturer offers new products and services, he is confident in their convenience, usefulness and relevance. But consumers instantly put everything in its place. We all consider ourselves ideal customers, every desire we have seems to be useful to others. Here are the reasons why this is not always the case.

Proof 1. He who is always right is a priori wrong

Statistics show that clients who demand unquestioning fulfillment of their own “wants” just because they are always right rarely fall under the definition of adequate.

In this sense, we are lucky - we have loyal and understanding users. There was only one case when a client, using all the profanity known to him, claimed that the business of our colleague from technical support was to listen, agree and immediately fulfill any request. Because he bought everything. But the young man repented when we offered him to do the same for 1490 rubles a year (the cost of our annual subscription).

Proof 2. The client thinks only of himself

It rarely coincides with the desires of other users. For example, guys with good computer skills asked us to remake the interface for the keyboard, excluding the use of the mouse in the exercises.

Comfortable? Yes. But the mouse is more understandable and accessible to a larger mass of customers; a separate instruction is not needed to use it. Part of our audience is users aged 65+. Even given their progressiveness, we will not try our patience with instructions for entering commands from the keyboard to complete the exercise. This feature is in demand only among geeks very narrow circle of people.

Another client asked to exclude complex concepts, terms and adult humor from the exercises - this is difficult and harmful for her eight-year-old grandson, in whose giftedness she is convinced. That's why he deals with him in a course for adults. It is unlikely that the rest of the students of the course would have been happy with the change.

Proof 3. Customers are often wrong

And I am writing this paragraph as a client. We do not read contracts, user agreements, small print. And then we demand compensation and returns, confident that we are all owed.

Who was burned on the trial periods? When they say: here, our application - use it for free for a week, and then pay for the next month or turn off automatic payment in the settings. Yes, yes, a week for free, we nod. The rest of the information is white noise. Until the first withdrawal.

We do not read the terms of the promotions, and then we believe that we have been deceived. And the company is to blame - make the action transparent, without creativity.

Proof 4. The user does not know the subtleties

99% of customers see the finished product and do not imagine its structure from the inside. Supplementing an application or site with useful, according to the user, functions threatens to overload the interface, which will make the site more difficult to use.

We have a small group of clients we call "analysts". The guys are asked to keep all the mistakes they made in the exercises. To return to them at any time and ... analyze.

Analysis is useful, but storing such a history will be a serious burden for the site. And the best result will bring the passage of the exercise again. And then again. And further. Repetition is the mother of learning. Not analysis.

Recently I received the following letter from a user (spelling and punctuation preserved):

“When the field for entering English text opens, I don’t see Russian text. Often the keyboard does not appear and you need to reinstall the application in order for the keyboard to work. This DEFECT is present on Samsung tablet and Alcatel phone. The defect is already a year old. I celebrated his birthday!!! Call India and talented programmers will be brought to you in the evening, who need to be paid 3 times less, and they will be afraid of losing their jobs and will work quickly and efficiently.”.

What does the client see? A bug in the application that we have not fixed for a year, because our mediocre programmers with large salaries are sitting their pants at work.

What is real? A user has discovered a rare bug that is reproducible on some devices. He hid it from us for a year, suffered and endured, instead of writing to technical support. Maybe he just needed something to celebrate in a year.

What about our programmers? The tech support person didn't want to share this email for the article. She was afraid that she would offend the addressee - our mobile developer, who fiddles with 4 Puzzle English applications, as if with her own children. From all the text, only information about the bug reached him.

No matter how talented programmers from India are, who are brought in the evening on a call, we will never replace our mobile developer. Because we see the situation from the inside, and the user - from the outside.

Evidence 5. Indulging the whims of users demotivates employees

Alexander Kjerulf, a well-known researcher of happiness at work, wrote about this 10 years ago. If the customer is always right, then the employee is always wrong. A team member who is faced with a situation where even the absurd claim of the client is resolved in his favor feels like an outcast. And yet they need to be heard.

We love our clients! They use the results of our work, and we are aware of the benefit that their feedback brings.

Feedback is important and needed. Some user letters pushed us to successful cases. For example, VIP membership. When several separate paid products appeared on the site, the user suggested that they be combined. This is how the All Inclusive tariff was born.

Or again about the keyboard. We did not translate the entire interface, but added the ability to select the desired words by the first letter, in addition to clicking the mouse. Ability to attach a file to a form feedback on the site - also the wish of the user, which made life easier for all of us.

We respect our clients. Everything we do (or don't do) is only for them. And despite the sometimes mind-blowing wishes, they help us to be better.

Good health, dear reader of the site magazine! In this article, we will talk about whether the client is always right and how to behave in a situation where you understand that the client’s stubbornness will negatively affect the result of the work.

Is the customer always right?

There are situations when the customer proves his case, although in fact he is wrong. How to explain it to him?

You should not tell him directly about this, even if you have worked with him for many years. Most people value their ideas highly and cannot always agree that they made a mistake.

To find a way out of this situation, you can use the following methods:

You are right, but...

In this case, it is best to switch his attention. Say what he said interesting idea, but how does he look at changing it a little? And tell me how you see it.

needs to be improved

Say that the idea is good, but it needs to be improved a little. Suggest the option you think is correct.

The customer will think that his idea has been implemented, but in fact yours. The main thing is to change the decision in such a way that the client does not understand this.

Refer to an expert's opinion

If the client insists on doing things that you shouldn't do, you can show him the results of research, where an expert opinion is expressed that defends your position.

Such methods are used when accepting the work of translators. To prove that the customer is wrong, you can offer him a link to a dictionary where the desired word is translated.

It often happens that clients test the knowledge of a specialist in this way.

You agree with the opinion of the customer and act as he suggests

But the result is so terrible that he goes back to your version.

This technique is used by designers to show the client how his version will look in practice.

Number of edits

When developing a creative product, the approval of which will depend on the personal opinion of the client, it is necessary to prescribe the number and scope of changes in the contract.

Suppose a copywriter in the terms of reference can highlight the plan of the article, and indicate in the contract: if the text is written in accordance with the plan, you can make one edit that will affect no more than 30% of the text, and after that it will be approved.

This will protect you from customers who can endlessly offer to make changes to articles.

Nobody is immune from mistakes. Similarly, the performer can make a mistake.

Before you insist on your beliefs, you need to make sure that you are right. After all, it may turn out that the client will be right. Then you need to take note of his opinion and do as he wants.

Let's watch a video on the topic Is the customer always right?

The customer is always right

Is the customer always right?

The client is always right and what clients are worth working with

Conclusion

In this article, we examined the topic Is the client always right and how to behave in situations where you understand that the client is not right, but insists on doing what he wants.

I hope the article was helpful. If you have any questions, you can ask them through the comment form below this article.