Three Reasons Why Customers Are Not Always Right

Customers don’t always know what they want

Setting customer expecations is important to good customer service.
Credit: Oregon Department of Transportation

We all know the famous quote, “The customer is always right.” It was coined more than a century ago. In the United States, it was popularized by Marshall Field during the early 1900s. In the United Kingdom, it was popularized by Harry Gordon Selfridge of luxury retailer Selfridge’s fame. Since then, businesses have used it generously to demonstrate their focus on customers. Don’t we still see CEOs, business owners, and shops proudly displaying this message in their office or place of work?

Although this focus is well intentioned, I wonder if they understand the impact of the statement? I have seen CEOs establishing it as a corporate mantra, reinforcing the idea among their employees by communicating it in all forums. If customer-centricity is what a business would like to embed, I would say this is a hazardous mantra to adopt because it can lead to not understanding what customers really want, set up false expectations, and worse, could demotivate employees.

The customer is not always correct, Let me tell you why.

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Comments

Let's not forget the obvious

I agree with the thrust of this article, but would add the obvious: customers are human and make mistakes. In the world of human visual inspection that means both misses and false alarms. The mistakes a manufacturing company might make in its inspection operations are necssarily always confounded by the mistakes made by the customer as they inspect the parts (and often in far more informal settings with less carefully scripted inspection routines, lighting, etc.). Too often what the customer hands down as fact is prone to the same errors (if not worse) than the supplier. Educating customers about this is an important step to harmony -- including assuring that both supplier and customer have the same standards.