Why the saying “The Consumer is always right” is wrong.
This oft-quoted catchphrase “The customer is always right” revolves around the world of business. It was pioneered by Mr. Harry Gordon Selfridge in 1909 and as a client, you may have thought that this catchphrase relates to you.
The objective of this phrase was to instill in customers a sense of high-quality customer service, and the employees were prompted to provide it. This customer-centric philosophy, however, has been discovered to be obsolete and no longer important.
Ironically, this mindset resulted in poor customer service. Here are some of the reasons for this:
- Employees feel that they are not supported
Employees are most likely doing their best to follow the rules and adhere to the guidelines, but in a corporate environment there will always be unruly and disrespectful customers approaching the customer service team and despite their best efforts a positive result in not always possible. As a result, maintaining quality employees should be a top priority, as doing so would compel them to prioritize customers.
2. It’s non-viable to satisfy everyone
The motive behind the strategies and hard work of every business is to stimulate the largest extent of customers in the market. It’s non-viable or impractical for any business to imagine that every single individual in the market can be their customers. A business should always add efforts towards those potential customers, whose preferences and requirements are ‘right’ or favorable for the performance of a business. Adding quality customers always helps to raise the success level of the business.
3. Strains management-employee relationship
The idea of pitching ‘customer is always right’ puts the customers at an unfair advantage as mentioned. Employees are the company’s most valuable assets. Correcting an employee every time defects and further forestalls them, resulting in resentment towards higher management. It manifests skepticism towards the employees’ propensity to settle circumstances. In materiality, embracing employees engender fortunate trade.
4. Raise the bar
We know that the world is evolving fast, so it will be wrong to adjust with only customer point of view because this coin has two sides: —
1. Customer satisfaction and 2. Innovation and quality.
So, if we adopt one side approach then quality and innovation will be compromised and if we go deep then we will find that it’s also interconnected with customer satisfaction, and many times customers themselves are not aware of quality measures. As a result, they mostly judge the product according to their price. So, it’s our duty to provide products after applying all quality and innovative measures.
To sum up everything that has been stated so far, we can say that business works in a dynamic environment and the customer’s perspective has evolved over time. The customer might not be always right but being customer-centric will provide aid to the organization.
— Aditi, Khushi, Ambuz, Vanshika & Vineet.
