Stew Leonards grocery store, it works here. Made him a lot of money.

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It depends on your business. In retail you can suck up a small loss knowing the same person will probably return time and after time and eventually you will make money on them.

In other businesses you can't handle all the available business, so why not pick the best customers and dump the problem causers?

We try hard to do what the customer wants, even when they themselves don't even know for sure what they need. Some customers THINK they are more knowledgeable about what we do than we are. We have to tell some customers we don't do this for fun or as a hobby, it is a business.

One customer was a recent college graduate and had degrees in civil engineering. He was proof positive that a college degree can be had by idiots. The perfect theory does not always fit the real world when it comes to aerial mapping. We did finally just tell him to go away. We were never going to make any money on him and he was just a waste of time.

The secret to customer satisfaction and making the customer FEEL that they are right:

Find out their expectation, and exceed it - always...

Sounds stupid, and unachievable... until you learn that YOU actually set the expectation if you are a good business owner... Customers don't know what to expect, many times, until you tell them. Stupid, but true.

Which makes the customer happier? Telling them you will deliver something in 2 days...but doing it in 4? Or telling them that "I am crazy overbooked, but I will squeeze you in and get it to you in a week!" And then dropping it off in 5 days?

Its the latter...

What makes the customer happier? Looking at a broken part and saying "Awe, thats easy to fix... leave it for a day..." Or, "Wow, thats going to take some real skill and time to fix. But, since I value you as a client, I will get my best guy on it" and then drop it off the next day?

Or a simple one. When you have a meeting, whether or not you are running on time, have your staff tell the waiting party that it will be 10-15 minutes before you are in. When you show up and walk in a couple minutes later, the typical response is "Wow! That was fast, thanks for coming in so early..."

In each of these cases, the work done was the same. The effort was the same. The words forming the framework were different.

It took me 10 years to figure that out. YOU as the business owner set the expectations, even though the client thinks that they do it. Set the bar BELOW what you can achieve...

Bo

So true. I worked a lot of retail when I was in college (restaurants/outdoor stores) and learned early that in certain circumstances the customer is always right.

In my current business we go strictly by contract and execute to the contract. There is simply too much time, effort and money at stake to not negotiate everything in advance.

I have turned away potential customers because they could not define what they wanted. Too much risk.

I tell my employees the customer may not always be right but they are the customer and they are the ones that allow me to pay my employees. My employees will usually let the customer think they are getting their way even when they are not.
One day I was in the back when I heard yelling and screaming I came out to find a very good customer who is usually very nice screaming at the kid behind the counter. Turns out the customer in this case was actually right but there was no reason to speak to my employee the way he did. I offered him his drink for free and apologized anyway. The next day he came back and apologized to me and the employee and said he was having a bad day. He is still a great customer to this day.

I am very sure it originated from Sears after the Depression, realizing that retaining customers was less costly in the long run and key to continued growth of the brand - predating Walmart.

Under promise and over deliver.
When I sold ET Wright shoes at the May Company in South Coast Plaza back in the early 1970s my boss, a guy name Gene Fahl taught us that. He was an old shoe dog that really knew the business. We had a great product. Gene treated every customer with respect (as others here have stated) and he viewed the difficult customers with particular glee, he love the challenge of winning them over. I never saw him upset a customer or lose one, though others shared stories of the rare events. Even then, he was said to always shake hands and recommend another brand that he thought might better fit or serve the wishes of the customer. He was a great guy and I learned a lot from him. One of his skills was teaching. By the time I left that place after college I had a client list that I could call and fill thier needs, before they even walked in. It was great fun.

You only have to read some of the food service issues posted here. Spill a drink on someone? Give them a free meal and some cash for dry cleaning. The alternative is someone who badmouths your business for the next ten years, regardless of who was at fault.

I have 4 inside sales guys...all have been with me 13-22 yrs. 3 are EXCELLENT...1 I want to pull my hair out! He coddles customers for 30 to 45 min at a time trying to get their custom order right. Sometimes it's wrong and I get to eat it. He costs me $75.00/hr. The custom sheet metal fitting will sell for 80-100. Thankfully the other 3 just plain kill it! They all have their own sets of regulars...and whoa to me should their regular guy not be in! Even though they cover for each other...so many of these customers are used to the hand holding!

It is smart business.

If there's a problem and the business says the customer is right and makes the customer happy, that customer will tell 1 person about a good experience and most likely do biddness with the company again. Most likely a break even sitch.

BUT ......

if the company tells the customer he's wrong and to go pound sand, he'll never do business with the company again and it's a guaranty he'll tell 10 other people how crappy that biddness is.

Net loss on bottom line and also on reputation and future sales.

Some really great comments here - very applicable.

The longer I am in business the more I realize how important the up front conversation is to set the tone for what will follow.

"Under promise - over deliver." says it all. BTW, a very successful local car dealer shared that with me one day years ago.

It almost seems like playing poker at times...keep your cards close to your vest!

About 12 years ago, a younger, more arrogant version of myself walked into your garage, and asked you to do a laundry list of updates to my newly purchase 1982 SC. Installing hydraulic chain tensioners was on the list. I knew I had found the right guy when you looked down into the engine bay, looked up at me quizzically and said, "Well, they're already phuching done. You want me to do them again?" :D

The customer is definitely not always right. I have sent about a dozen patients the 10 day letter, as in, you are fired, find a new guy after 10 business days.

I have plenty of people out there talking about me in a positive sense. If you look at an online review deal, and there are 99 good to great reviews and one that is horrible, what are you going to think of that bad review, assuming there are a couple neurons sparking in your melon?

I always tell people it is going to take longer to get over something than I think it will. If I tell you it will be 3 months, and it turns out to be 8 weeks, the perception is, "Wow, that guy is really good."

All true but the concept is about respecting the people that give you money for your goods/services.

Or in other words it's about kissing arse so your customer will shop with you again.

I respectfully disagree.
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That stupid philosophy literally made Sam Walton one of the richest men in the world.

John, how often do you hear:

I saw how you can do X on Pelican

or

That's not how they do it on Pelican

or

I saw someone do it cheaper on Pelican...

^^^^^ This is very true, not just with Pelican, but people finding how it can be done in "X" amount of time and for "X" dollars...

If a business thinks the customer is not right then likely there was a communication error where the business did not do a good enough job communicating up front about what the product/service promise was or what it was going to cost. Now, the customer may choose not to hear what is being said up front, and that happens, but it is key to set expectations up front before any transaction takes place.

These expectations can be set in marketing (commercials, ads etc) or they can be set during a conversation (meeting, call, email etc) with a client. In the end, the business and the client need to both agree on the deliverables.

At the end of the day, the business needs to sit back and ask why did my customer/client feel he was in the right and why did I feel he wasn't? 99% of the time it is a communication opportunity...

"The customer is always right"

From the Wiki....

"The customer is always right" is a motto or slogan which exhorts service staff to give a high priority to customer satisfaction. It was popularised by pioneering and successful retailers such as Harry Gordon Selfridge, John Wanamaker and Marshall Field. They advocated that customer complaints should be treated seriously so that they should not feel cheated or deceived. This attitude was novel and influential when misrepresentation was rife and caveat emptor (let the buyer beware) was a common legal maxim.[1] Variations include "le client n'a jamais tort" (the customer is never wrong) which was the slogan of hotelier César Ritz[2] who said, "If a diner complains about a dish or the wine, immediately remove it and replace it, no questions asked".[3] A variation frequently used in Germany is "der Kunde ist König" (the customer is king).

However it was pointed out as early as 1914 that this view ignores that customers can be dishonest, have unrealistic expectations, and/or try to misuse a product in ways that void the guarantee and states "if we adopt the policy of admitting whatever claims the customer makes to be proper, and if we always settle them at face value, we shall be subjected to inevitable losses."[4] The work concluded "If the customer is made perfectly to understand what it means for him to be right, what right on his part is, then he can be depended on to be right if he is honest, and if he is dishonest, a little effort should result in catching him at it."[5] An article a year later by the same author addressed the caveat emptor aspect while raising many of the same points as the earlier piece.[6]