Article: Sbu Mpungose from women24

The maxim "The customer is always right" was originally coined by Harry Gordon Selfridge who was a founder of a department store in London in the 20th century.

The purpose of this phrase is two-fold: firstly it serves to assure customers that if they choose to use your service and products they'll get red carpet treatment every time, and secondly it forces your employees to give good service.

Alexandra Kjerulf, an author and human resource experts, came up with five reasons why the mantra "The customer is right" is wrong.

Two reasons stuck in my mind:
* it makes employees (even the excellent ones) unhappy, and * it also gives unruly customers carte blanche to misbehave.

Good service, bad service
Let me start with the latter because it does impact on the former. Customers by nature are hedonistic beings, but I believe there are no good or bad customers just those that are bad for business.

For example, a friend who is a marketing specialist has horrid tales of clients who are sexist and racist. She's noted that time and money is spent on the boorish clients rather than the ones that are reasonable and cooperative.

She says it's no longer about whether the company can deliver on their work promises, but more about golf weekend with clients where employees are meant to carry "huge bottles of Vaseline to wax their behinds". Although bad-mannered clients are bringing in substantial amounts of money, she believes the company is losing revenue and skills because of the high staff turnover as a result of the clients’ abusive behaviour towards employees.

She herself is so unhappy and frustrated about the conditions there that she's decided to jump ship. Many companies fall short of protecting their staff from psychotic clients by not empowering their people with tools to deal with them or fail to stand up for them when a customer steps out of line. And they do.

Example number two: A social contact was called a piece of useless fat crap by a customer, and when she retaliated, she was sent to a disciplinary hearing and given a warning.

When she sought help from HR she was told rude clients are part of her job hazard and she should grow a tougher hide and a sense of humour. She had been with the company for five years, won several awards and hadn't once received a complaint from clients.

Sacrificing good employees for bad business isn't the way to go according to successful American CEO Hal Rosenbluth who believes that companies should put the customer second and their staff first and watch them kick butt.

Perhaps the real problem isn't the phrase "The customer is right" but rather that companies have taken it too literally. The phrase should rather be an attitude that one has towards customer, but not to those customers who are undeserving.

What do you think?