The saying has been corrupted. Selfridge originally meant the saying to mean customer complaints should be treated seriously so that customers do not feel cheated or deceived. Nowadays people take it to mean the customer can do no wrong and is king of all he surveys.
this post was submitted on 31 Jul 2023
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I always thought it was supposed to reference market sentiment.
If your company is focused on X, but is also doing Y, and the market is really taking up with Y, you need to focus on keeping Y alive and well. Makes for a successful company to respect the market's wishes, and allows you to pursue X while Y is subsidizing it.
If you insist that X is the future, and put Y on the back burner to focus on X, well, the market will find a competitor who is doing Y better than you, and the market will abandon you.
Spez? Elon? You there guys?
Notice how a delicate ego has no place in business?
It really only applies if success of the company is your primary concern.
More that the customer has ultimate veto power over any deal. You can do everything absolutely perfectly, and the (potential) customer can still decide the deal is "wrong" and walk away completely.
You don't have to convert every potential customer into an actual customer, but an actual customer will only convert if they believe they are "right".
An actual customer can do no wrong, but not everyone who walks through your doors is an actual customer.
"The Customer is Always Right" originally referred to the pricing of an item. Meaning if the customer thinks it's a good price, then you've picked a good price. That's it. It was never meant to be used as an excuse to bend over backwards to your customer's every whim
No it didn’t. It always referred to customer service.
Damn it. I fell for another stupid internet fallacy.
I thought it was more about the design in the context of working with a client to make a custom product where they tell you the purpose and give you specs, you see that the product they are asking for sucks for the stated purpose and try to point that out but they argue it. At that point, just make the product they are asking for and let them sort out the rest. It'll probably mean more money for you because they'll be back to ask for the changes you originally suggested. Or who knows, maybe they are actually right.
The full quote is "The customer is always right in matters of taste."
And it was never a saying, it was a commercial tagline.
In matters of taste.
They're still idiots. But people forget that second part, and become extremely entitled little shits.
The problem isn't the customer's expectations (within rational limits of course) the problem is all the levels of managent giving the customer satisfaction because they don't understans, and always forget thr last part about taste.
I know, that if I go to a Walmart and start a big enough fuss, Walmart will give as little as they can (to often monetarily desperate) to get them to stop causing a scene.
I worked in electronics, and per protocol had to inspect a returned PS2. It was physically beat up, had paint splotches on it, and it would not power on, and thr serial number was missing.
I said no. Simple as that. Not paid enough to fight customers. They wanted a manager. Two hours later they walked out with fucking cash.
I think the saying is an abstract concept and began because the customer is always right if the business is doing well or not, but somehow the meaning got twisted around to an abomination of "Customer is entitled to bully, throw a tantrum and be arrogant and demanding."
As a German I had a good loud laugh about that.
Basically anyone living in a country older than about 150 years, has to deal with 17th century housing stock. My house wasn't originally constructed with indoor plumbing, that was added later. And not well may I add.
Sorry I mean the whole idea of the customer is always right . You mostly have shitty treatment here.
Do you mean the shitty customers get shitty treatment? My experience with shopping while in Germany was no different than at home in the US. Except the one store I went to where no one spoke English and I had to ask a random person outside for help. But, I mean... I'm not one of those jackass customers 🤷🏻♂️
No, I mean entering a bakery and being ignored or the staff is annoyed with you before you say a word.
At the bike shop they get annoyed because the breaks of your beater bike are rusty.
At the Deutsche Bahn, they get annoyed with you if their train came late, so you miss your last connection and be stranded, so you ask how to solve this problem.
Of course most interaction are neutral and the bad ones just stick to memory.
I'm happy for you that you were lucky, I traveled a lot in the western world and had nowhere an experience as bad as the general experience here. Maybe in the Netherlands and Belgium.
We are kinda infamous for bad customer service. And there are 100s of experiences you find on Google. Like this:
The trick is finding which customers are entitled idiots and un-customer them.
We became much better at doing that during covid. We all have enough stress already, we don't need to take yours too!
Maybe because that's not the full quote and you're misunderstanding the meaning. This is like when people think "survival of the fittest" means the strongest/fastest etc.
It is the full quote and OP is not misunderstanding its meaning.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_customer_is_always_right
You’re thinking of a later retort that was added to try to change the quote.
“The customer is always right” is a bad maxim, just like “caveat emptor” that it replaced was a bad maxim.
A better one should be something like, “Valid customer complains should be taken seriously.” Sometimes business do something wrong and should have to fix them; other times, customers are full of it and should be informed as such.
Most people misunderstand the meaning, it's not each customer that is always rights, it's the customer base as a hole, but even that is meaningless when everything is owned by a handful of monopolies so consumers don't even have a choice.
I don't understand how a "rude customer" is related to "most people buy big cars." Also, the customer is always right is an American thing, that may explain why I'm confused.
Last but not least, I bought the smallest car available because I wanted this. Most people buy big cars because they are influenced by the things around them, it doesn't mean that they are rude to the cashiers.
Is it even widely used anymore?
Only by asshole customers.
That saying was not meant to be interpreted as literally true - it was designed to extract more money from customers who would generate repeat business = moar profits.
You’ve got a point but remember what we say, The aphorism is always right.
So let’s cool it with the anti-aphorism talk eh?
A close friend works in a pet shop, and half the time the customer could not be more wrong or more of an asshole if their life depended on it, tbh.
We need a new place in hell, staffed entirely by vampire monster bunnies, for parents who bring their kids to a pet shop to let them "play with" the animals there and knock on the glasses and shit.
the customer is always an asshole
Although perhaps that's not the best example of a service worker lol
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The maxim "The Customer is always right" comes from management and or ownership of a customer/retail business whose purpose was to promote the feeling in current and potential customers, that their needs were paramount to all other concerns, as a way for the business to procure and retain more customers, so that the business thrives and profit is made.
Employees feelings and work environment were purposefully ignored as being far less important than the income generated from customers who experience complete satisfaction in the transaction of money for goods and services, and can depend on their being equitable recompense should any issue or problem occur, to their ultimate benefit.
This was never an employee concerned protocol, only a customer and profit driven protocol, which businesses employed, and still sometimes employ.