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.

The 'Customer'...

One of my bosses referred people we help in IT as the 'customer'... And IT is sort of Customer Service.

The sad thing of it all, the motto of "The customer is always right..." is always touted so many times when it comes to Customer Service. Sometimes, it is ranted about by the very customers in the face of the Customer Service Rep who is doing their job.

Now, I will tell you, I am no 'shining' or 'happy' type of person at times. It always makes me want to hang up on some people who think that yelling at me would make me be 'more effective'.

Now, let's point out some examples of 'customers' that make me wonder just how they could be 'right' in any sense of the word.

1) The Angry Customer
Now these are the usual, red in the face "I'm PISSED and you are going to give me what I want or I will just yell at you!" type of people. You've all seen it, some of you have actually acted it out with the customer service agent when they don't give you what you want and thinking that yelling at them will make them cower and bow down before you.

Seriously... Take a moment to consider what you are doing. The whole angry routine just stresses out the agent. He or she wants to help you, but treating them with hostility isn't really winning you points. Sure, it might get their manager to come over and see what they can do, but the thing you all have to understand is, there are some things just throwing a fit at won't really solve.

2) Playing the 'Title' Card
I have had this pulled on me a few times. One where I literally had a VP ask me if it would help if they called a vendor and use their name and title to help 'grease' the wheels. Sometimes it works, but often times, a title doesn't mean anything unless you happen to be Mr. Moneybags who can move mountains of cash and can afford to throw money like you were exhaling gold.

On the flip side, I had to take a call from someone, he was actually using his company to get tech support on something of a personal nature, and given I was contracted only for company support, I couldn't help him. Now he tried to pull the whole "I'm one of the principles of this company..." with me, but I was told that given the nature of his call wasn't company related, I couldn't help him.

So something has to be said about this. Be realistic. There are limitations to what a title can seriously do. In the first case, the problem was there was a procedure, one that couldn't be expedited any further than the situation, but given the answer wasn't good enough, time to throw the title around. Same with the second part, given I had to tell him I couldn't help him with a personal problem with his company's account, he tried to use his title to justify that we HAD to help him.

In both cases, the customer was simply in the wrong.

3) The stupid customer...
Now this is a story someone mentioned:

'I graduated in 2009. How can I get my student e-mail account back?'
'You'd have to re-enroll as a student.'
'Okay, transfer me to Admissions.'
'okey dokey'

Now, just to be clear... Someone graduated from this College/University... And they want their student e-mail account back... So, the person is going to re-enroll to get their student account. *boggle*

Now, sure, I can understand people wanting to keep certain things, but there is also some things you can't keep. Unless this person wanted a copy of their old e-mail, which would be kind of amazing if it was still there after several months of not being in the system anymore.

It does make you wonder about how people like this could be 'right' in any way. As I posted before, there are some people who make these lame ass arguments from no real experience other than their ASSUMED belief. And as the old saying goes for 'ASSUME'...

4) The Arrogant Customer
This type of customer is right next to the angry ones in 'numbers'. They are sort of a mixture of 'stupid' or 'title' types as well, but they tend to push their ego in enough to try and beat people in doing what they want, ignoring the whole 'reality' thing all together.

It doesn't matter that in the existence of Reality, what they believe is utterly wrong and completely insane... It is simply not something they will accept and will just put forth that something can be done simply because they said so.

These types tend to make you want to back hand them, but of course, being the customer service person, you have to make them happy.

These few types I put up are just ones I can think of that bug me the most. It bugs me because they prove that there are people who aren't grounded by being rational or willing to be rational, simply because it does not 'fit' their view of things.