About the saying "The customer is always right..."

So in my checking to see how someone can dig himself deeper in his own stupidity, this being Mr. Christoforo, I ran across this comment that made me stop for a second...

WTF is wrong with this guy? He doesn't think he is deserving of the backlash and all the hate that came from HIS inability to realize that the customer is always right. Never mind the fact that the customer is either handicapped or is buying the controller for someone who is.

This is a comment referencing the fail that Christoforo has done. But one thing I have to say, the customer isn't necessarily always right. I never really 100% agreed with this statement, since there are dozens, if not hundreds of times where the customer uses this as their soapbox to rant and rave about something they don't know in the face of people with the knowledge. Now in Christoforo's case... He was never right on his side. The customer may not have all the facts, but the way he treated the customer was well past the line of 'good common sense'. But enough of focusing on the failure of Paul Christoforo... That's a dead horse beating there. One thing to note is that there will be a fair share of the time the customer is NOT right. It is, however, important to help the customer as best you can. At the same time, this is a good time to help educate the customer in some things they may be misunderstanding. While I rant about how I find the customer being foolish or much stronger words, the thing is, I try also not to let the customer know that they are such unless we are on really good terms or literally facing me. The reason for this is so both of us can see what is going on and also gauge the frustration level. The problem with phone support is that often times, you can't really 'see' the person and judge beyond their voice. The other thing is, that sometimes people will speak in a tone that will often be confused as something else. For Example: I know of a couple of Chinese people, worked with them a few times, however, when you just 'hear' them, at first, you think they are very abrasive. The thing is, that is not the case, it is how they learned to speak in english as well as their dialect of Chinese tends to sound abrasive, when in fact, that is just normal. You would not know they were joking until you saw their face, the expression showing whether or not they are angry or just joking with you because you can't get that from just the tone. Now while some will cite the same thing with e-mails, this is true... Text shows no means of expression short of the typed emoticons like :) or ^_^ type stuff. But it is also important, regardless of being a customer or a service rep to not take the message personally, but try to reach a compromise. A customer should never always 'take take take'... You have to relent a little because not everything works exactly as you expect it.