Is the customer always right?

As a bare minimum, you've got to make sure the customer always thinks that you think they're always right. Otherwise they won’t be a customer as you’ve no right to their money. You've also got to be careful when to make sure that you know what the customer thinks is right. That's rarely what they say but you've got to examine their real motivations, needs, behaviours etc and so get true insight. As Henry Ford said, “If I asked people want they wanted, they would have said faster horses”. So to be really successfully, you have to act as if the customer is always right. But the successful business will use insight to know more about what the customer is right about, than the customers know themselves.

I recall one of those joke signs: "The customer is always right - even when the customer is wrong". Stephen, you are bang on the money. The customer is paying us - so they have to be right. It's a challenge some times because we can see where the customer's thinking is going and we know that their expectations won't be met if we blindly follow that course. This is where interpersonal communication skills need to come to the fore: a delicate blend of empathy and assertiveness. The customer must believe that what you are suggesting was their idea.

I think your top 20% customers (those who drive 80% of your revenue) are always right. And this is where you will adapt your product or service based on their needs/desires etc to make sure you meet (and where possible exceed) their expectations. For the other customer segments then I believe this is where the common sense needs to be applied. Maybe it's this group who would have been offered the faster horses whilst the top 20% of customers were offered a ford :)

Coming from a sales background, I agree with all the comments made above. It is about prioritising the needs of different customers, knowing what their thinking is behind certain actions and a whole heap of tact!

I think it's best to say that the customer 'always comes first'. If you are good at working with your clients, you should be able to build a relationship strong enough for you to be able to tell them when they are not totally right (well, I couldn't really go as far as wrong...)

I like the Henry Ford quote Stephen. Ford also said this: "A business that makes nothing but money is a poor kind of business." I wonder what some of the other things were that he was thinking of? Customer loyalty? A good reputation?

We could have a whole forum just quoting Henry Ford! But given he was one of the founders of "welfare capitalism" (albeit it his own peculiar style), I guess he meant companies have a wider responsibly than they bottom line. Which wasn’t new nor has it gone away –from the great Victorian industrialists' model villages, to the "stakeholder engagement" of a few years ago and now is called sustainability. I’d be nervous about giving the 80% horses. As you’ll soon find they stop giving you business and then you’ll find a new 80:20 in your remaining customers and so on in ever decreasing circles until you have a very,very small business. Instead, you should build you whole business (propositions, service and experience) around the 20% and then not only will you steal some of the 20% for your competitors, you’ll find many of the 80% start spending at much higher levels so you have every increasing circles.

For what it is worth here are my views on customers and there status: http://iainflovatt.wordpress.com/2010/09/24/the-customer-is-king-not-alw... and like Saba wrote there is a need to treat to treat each customer differently but only those that make it worth your while are right all of the time. So to answer the question 'No' customers are not always right.

I agree with much that has already been said particularly Giffard. However, the skill is making the customer think they are right while still needing your help. After all if the customer is always right why should they use you?