The Customer Is Always Right...

I can relate to that one.

glad I'm not the only one that thinks that.

Customers cause 90% of their own problems in any biz.

and that's being conservative.


Bad day Allen?


Jim

Haha someone had a bad day... ;p

You are absolutely right!
Customers sometimes irritate so much and their changing requirements which come up so often don't allow working with a consistent pace and they need the job done on their said deadline!

haha...not some..MANY !

...around the corner from having their face visited by Mr. Fist.

Lol.

Yup.

And the customer is frequently wrong would be more apt.

I find 10% of customers cause 99% of the problems... I try to refund them as quickly and cleanly as possible and never have contact with them again.

I find it amusing that Allen's threads always get around 10-15 posts within a minute or two. How about some music Allen?


And I agree with Allen. Some customers are too stupid to be allowed to live. :-)

Wow... an Allen Says sighting! You will see Bigfoot abducted by aliens to undergo an anal probe more than you will see an Allen Says sighting! My year has been made now!!!!

Well, that's one way to look at it. But then, without the customer, where would we "business people" be? We NEED the damn customer! And unfortunately, everybody isn't as smart as we are: So...with THAT said, let's back up a bit, and remember why we're in business.

Sometimes, you just have to IGNORE the ignorance or stupidity or rudeness or xx@#! of others and stay focused on WHY you are in business in the first place, and what you are trying to accomplish by being in business for yourself.

Yes, customers can, and often ARE, exasperating. But then, the sun goes down, and we sleep awhile, and the sun comes up another day. Get over it and move on, is what I say. (Go in the bathroom and scream and come out again with a big smile on your face. That'll piss 'em off!)

http://www.notalwaysright.com

go. you'll smile.

What?

Wait, wait, wait...what?

Allen,

I prefer to think the customer is always wRight.

George Wright

Whoever coined that phrase was probably a ceo that never had to even SEE the customer. Before I got into copy and IM, I was a guitar salesman at guitarcenter. Before and during that time i was touring a lot with my band and selling my own merch at shows (very similar to being a retail salesperson only customers are often drunk!.)

Dumb customers became the bane of my existence and I wish that some higher power had granted me the authority to dish out a slap to the face for every ignorant question, ridiculous request, bs refund, etc that i had to deal with from one unprecedentedly entitled customer after another.

Even when I was working for an IM company I had to often times do refunds, answer support emails, and even take over coaching calls when the "gurus" were too busy.

Finally I was given a chance to get even.

I was a muay thai instructor at the time and was offered a part time job where...

THE CUSTOMER IS ALWAYS WRONG!

While I was doing freelance technical writing during the day, I started bouncing at a frat bar on 6th street in downtown austin.

Basically i walked around with a radio ear piece looking for people that were acting up or being too drunk and I would make them leave one way or another. There was also a really strict dresscode there so if i didn't like someone, i could just make up a reason to throw them out.

Whenever any of the bartenders would radio me (big establishment with 4 separate bars in one) I was the first person who got to go tell the "customer" he was wrong and throw them out on their ass if they didn't want to go out nicely.

I know it's different since I wasn't in sales (and the pay wasn't stellar), but it was fun while it lasted.

Good post, thanks for the rant opp.

One of the biggest problems is a lot of ...less than intellectually savvy... people out there live by that mentality, as customers. The belief that they are infallibly correct about everything and are some how owed flawless service and unreasonable standards by those providing them a service seems to be rampant.

In many cases, this mentality stretches beyond paying customers to those who are prospective buyers... I'm a community manager for a free to play MMO, a game which up until recently was completely un-monetized and still in beta. A game was being given to them for free, and always will be with the option to spend real money. Yet so many people act as if we owe them the world, any hiccups on our end are blasphemous and intolerable and must be raged about profusely... though I'm starting to get off topic a tad here.

People are dumb - I second the motion for face shooting and downside up nostril torture!

Will this be on the sales page of you next product?

Timothy Ferriss has an excellent discussion about this in his book, The Four-Hour-Workweek.

Interestingly, his observations agree with yours. Though there is no mention of gun play.


Joe Mobley

Our wonderful administrator is always right

This is great, Allen says something (which happens to be true), and it gets treated like the word of god. I find that amusing. A thank you from "admin" should be worth at least 100 from regular members.
Allen, please come out with a thread stating that people should buy my stuff!:p

Maybe I shouldn't tease you, I could get banned at the blink of an eye....&

Anyway, what you say really is correct, people think that just because they are paying money for something, they get to determine the entire process, boneheads.

Is it BT or British Gas you are working for?

On the subject - Not Always Right | Funny & Stupid Customer Quotes - always good for a laugh/facepalm.

http://clientsfromhell.net/ falls under the same category as well.

Allen's customer service specialist is now ready to serve your needs .

The customer is always right when the customer accepts the fact that
the customer doesn't usually know what's right...

That's why the customer prefers to talk to the person selling the
product/service before buying it and to ask a truckload of questions
before and after the purchase, over just buying it and figuring out how
to get the benefits it supposedly provides on his or her own...

What I usually do is inform, educate and entertain them by dropping a link
pointing to the description section of my product/service and restating
what is clearly shown there in a blow-by-blow subtle feature-benefit-just buy it damn you and get over it tone...

When we are in business, customers often see us as easy to abuse. They throw guilt, anger and frustration at us, and sometimes just abuse us to make themselves feel better.

I think I'll hire Allen's customer service specialist.
No need to clean her up.

It was either Chicago's Marshall Field's (Macy's) or London's Selfridges' founders (Selfridges worked for Fields early in his career), who coined the term.

Take your shovel and march on brother, I think they are both dead. And from what I've read on the thread so far, there are a few marketers who will gladly help you dig up the graves.

Just saying...

It is sad that some businesses make their employees suffer verbal abuse from customers and "take it". I've never agreed with the principle. Better to lose the business from those kind of people and be kind to the people that work for you and allow them to defend themselves.

I know a police officer who mentioned that he likes his job because the customer is always wrong.

Come to think of it, I guess if they are really wrong, you do get to shoot one

To quote the great Gary Halbert...

" Clients Suck "

Best,


Bill Jeffels



.

Hmmm not sure about "shot in the damn face" but yeah, some customers are horrible. It's like when you work in a store, which I have, and somebody complains about the price of something and how it used to be cheaper and bla bla bla or they want some cheap thing for free and keep arguing with you to give it to them. Are they right? Nope, and no reason to let them have their way, they are wrong, way wrong.

Some customers are horrible. Some sellers are horrible. I guess, we can simply say - some people are horrible.

Some guys just don´t let go... I had a guy who broke a deal we had and wanted the product anyway, but under his newly found conditions.

I said. No thanks, it doesn´t work for me. Deal is out. He insisted, until I lost my manners and told him that for his information slavery was over. He said I was rude, but kept insisting in his new terms. I told him that if he wanted rude, he should hear me cursing in 4 different languages, what I can do.

he sent the money anyway... I refunded.:rolleyes:

I could not agree more. As an ex server it used to drive me crazy to see restaurant managers and owners bend over backwards for people that were just looking for a free meal. Sure sometimes you have to take care of someone when it is a good reason, but some people are just taking advantage of the system.

One of my favorite experiences is when a table decided to start cursing at me and my manager came up behind me and told them that they had five minutes to pay their tabs and get out. He even tacked on a 20% gratuity charge and threatened to call the police on them. Only time a manager I worked for actually stood up to a customer.

I have had a few encounters myself as a writer and I just refuse to bend my policy. If it is my fault and I messed up I admit it, fix it, and move on, but sometime people try to take advantage and that is just not going to happen with me.

Everybody should grow a pair and start standing up to the ridiculous people that think they are right just because they are the purchaser.

Benjamin Ehinger

Main reason why I left my job as call center agent.. LOL

hahaha, so very true. The way I like to think about it is "the customer isn't always right, but they are always the customer. That's always been my take on it.

I ordered this thread medium and it's well done! If I had wanted this thread well done, I would have ordered it that way.

Oh yeah, happy customers are repeat customers.

Most people don't know how to deal with difficult customers and many of those same people don't even realize that they have been that customer at least once.

Do some time at any service or retail job and you'll come away with the impression that people suck. How you deal with those people is what makes your day miserable or one fun and exciting encounter after another.

Bring 'em on. I like 'em feisty.

Let's just say... the customer is king, but you are the emperor!

And I'll never forget what a marketing professor at high school once said about customer education: 99% of people out there are as stupid as a pig.

(No offense to anyone of course!)

Customer isn't always right. If you have a customer that's just a pain in the ass FIRE that customer. Don't let that one person waste your time, give him a refund and never do business with him ^_^

NOT!

The customer IS always right, like it or not. If they want to give you their hard-earned money, they know what they want to buy. If you're not providing what they want, it's your problem, not theirs.

<Runs off, covers toes and face with duct tape and sticks head in snowbank (as an extra precaution...) just in case Allen is skulking about somewhere in the frozen northlands of Canada, eh!>

Before I go... in defense of pigs:

http://www.suite101.com/content/the-...ent-pig-a84448

Many years ago I bought Terry Dean's Copywriting course.

After the purchase, I found there were many unadvertised bonuses, but they were not delivered all at once. They were delivered one at a time, one week at a time.

A month after my purchase, I was still getting the bonuses. It was like a jackpot that kept paying out. Sometimes instant gratification isn't the best strategy.

Did I want to download all the bonuses the night of the purchase? Yes.

But I appreciated them a whole lot more a month later. I'd have to agree, the customer isn't always right, even if it's me

Dave Maschke