The Customer Is Always Right

At least, that’s what they always say.

These days, though, it seems like service to the customer is coming in a distant second to adherence to company policies. And company policies seem to be created by people with little common sense, and are upheld by employees who refuse to think for themselves.

Okay, you got me, this is a bit of a rant.

I’ve come across this over and over again, primarily in brick and mortar retail stores. Now, correct me if I’m wrong, but the primary reason to actually leave my house to shop is for the service, for interacting with real human beings who (presumably) care about my getting what I need out of my shopping experience. Yet time after time I find myself frustrated by company policy, while shopping online is usually a frustration free experience.

One situation recently was that my wife, daughter, and I were all shopping at Kohls. I took my daughter to look for something, while my wife went in a different direction. Our plan if we couldn’t find each other again was to use customer service to page the missing person. Well, it came down to that, with my daughter and I unable to find my wife in the store. If you’re a parent, you know how hard it is to actually look for anyone while you’re also keeping track of a three-year old.

So we headed to customer service, secure in our backup plan, explained the situation, and asked them to page her to the customer service desk.

Nope, Kohls company policy doesn’t allow pages. Frankly, I’ve never heard anything less customer friendly than that. I’m sure that there was one incident that caused the policy, but when I’m holding a three-year old who’s asking for her Mom, you’d think the employee could use their common sense.

So what’s the relevance here to Internet Marketing?

Just that above all, you have to remember that you are not here primarily to make money. You are here to serve customers and fulfill their needs, and make money in the process. If you focus on making money to the exclusion of all else, you become those people who hype up products being all reason, advertise false money back guarantees, etc. Focus on the customer, and you’ll build customer loyalty while also earning a living.

That gives you a base of people who trust you, and will buy from you again, rather than a bunch of one-shot sales.

4 Replies to “The Customer Is Always Right”

  1. Hi Jay,

    Did you explain to Kohl’s that it is your personal policy to blog about assinine behavior of large corporations and to never shop in places like that again?

    I think the large C’s forget that we can make policies too!

    The best remedy, I have found, is keep fighting with them for about an hour, so at least one employee is detained and being paid for wasting time. 😉

  2. [quote post=”576″]Did you explain to Kohl’s that it is your personal policy to blog about assinine behavior of large corporations and to never shop in places like that again?[/quote]

    LOL! At the time, I was too hot to think of it, but that would have been great!

  3. Yes, the customer might not always be right, but at least they deserve to have someone consider their needs instead of just blindly enforcing policy. That’s my biggest gripe, is that people don’t think, they just quote policy.

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