Back in 1909, the owner of the Selfridge Department Store on Oxford Street, London, coined the term “the customer is always right”. Well, that was his formula for a smooth journey towards success in any business, but is it still applicable to every customer?
Considering a lot of factors like various personal preferences, diverse lifestyles, a cosmopolitan culture in the big cities, etc., the opinions of the customers may not just vary drastically, but they can also be contradictory to the popular choices. Thus, it becomes impossible to make each customer happy.
However, the effort to make each customer’s choice count is still the basic idea to make your business successful. For this, a constant effort is necessary to keep an eye on the feedback of the customers which is a critical analysis and appraisal of one’s services. This is still the most relevant way to see what the customer wants instead of relying on the marketing assumptions about the demands of the potential audience.
But some customers are impossible to satisfy. This is because of their nature of finding negativity more than positive aspects in anything. For instance, there are people who when handed over the Feedback Card, will never write anything thankful or encouraging for the employees. Even the regular customers, mostly at restaurants and cafés can be found to be like this. They never give a “5-star rating” yet visit the place every now and then. Mostly, they use this behavior to avoid giving generous tips to the staff. This is not just unethical but quite disappointing for the business owners and the employees.
Impacts on the businesses
Dealing with the problematic and ever-complaining clients can be a headache for some employees. Some of the prominent negative impacts of this behavior include:
- Employees/workers become discouraged
When it comes to unreasonable and needlessly demanding customers, it is in the best interests of the company to remain on the side of its employees. You can’t fire a well-trained employee who remains with you every day and promotes your business, for some arrogant customer who pays you once and consider you their slave. If the employee gets upset or becomes discouraged, theory performance will be badly affected which is never good for the overall business.
- Not every customer can be right
There are all kinds of people visiting public places such as bookshops, restaurants, hotels, transport services, etc. But some of them might be hot-headed, immature, or plain wrong in judging the services. One of the frequent instances of arguments between the customers and the employees revolve around being delivered late or “not served right”. In such cases, the customers are short-tempered, annoyed from work/personal issues, or impatient enough to insult the service provider as if they are not even humans. This is unethical behavior that should be taken care of if you are a customer anywhere. Hence, not every customer can be right at all times.
- The ungrateful customers take advantage
When the business is directly linked with customers and the satisfaction of their needs, it becomes necessary to rely on their feedback. That is why they are asked about feedback through various communication means. However, this also can be used by arrogant customers as a way of ruining the reputation of the brand or service. They deliberately give negative comments over slight mishaps which can be an accident as well as the employees are also humans. Thus, asking for feedback can also be misused.
There is a common ethical way of give-and-take in public handling and dealing which is the mark of a civilized nation. If a customer is paying, he is also receiving a service in return; they are not paying for free. Thus, it is not only the responsibility of the business owners and the employees to make the customers happy, but the customers also need to be helpful, encouraging, and uplifting so that the services could be further improved for them with renewed enthusiasm and dedication by the brands.
