Hacker News Reader

Comment by justshipit | Hacker News Reader

Rule #1: "The customer is always right: no exceptions".

This is absolutely flat-out wrong. Bad customers will chew up your support time, engineering resources, and mental health.

The sooner it is recognized that some customers are simply toxic, the sooner you can get rid of them. If you fail to even entertain the notion that customers might be wrong, you're doing yourself and your employees a huge disservice.

View on HN

I think there's a difference between "the customer is always right" and "the customer gets everything that they want."

For example, a customer calls and says, "You overcharged me!" You look at the account and see that, no, the customer wasn't overcharged. The customer is right in the sense that they have through some influence of factors thought that they were overcharged. Was copy misleading? Was something not clear on one page or another?

There are a couple ways to handle this. One is where the customer is wrong: "no sir, you were not overcharged." and then argue with them until they hang up in frustration. Or you can get to the root of the misunderstanding (unclear fees? they forgot about taxes?) and then possibly choose to offer a refund as a thanks to them for helping you prevent other customers from becoming equally unhappy.

In my experience, the most toxic customers have been our biggest advocates and salesmen out in the world (yes, men, they're almost always men for some reason, not sure why), but you'd never know it based on the crazy abusive stuff we see in our email box.

The key is treating all customers, even the crazy & abusive ones, with respect and knowing when to cut bait. Staying above the fray and not letting it affect your tone when you respond can be really hard some days, 'cause we're all human, but it's worth it.

I can understand where you're coming from. From a support mentality they have to be viewed as being right, although admittedly there are some customers that are probably worth losing in the long run.

The idea behind that point was more to push the team to get things right and go that extra mile to help the customer. If they're rude though then the rule doesn't apply.

From my perspective, customers should be viewed as having great value. This is an entirely different thing from saying that the customer is always right (which by the way contains the additional team-killing undercurrent of suggestion that management will always back the customer over their own employees).

Some customers will use vast amounts of your time and constantly expect you to accommodate them. Especially in a small operation, the customers that cause disproportionate expense are toxic. These are the ones that you need to actively fire, and the assumption that every customer is a good customer (or that every customer is right) quite simply precludes this option.

You're both right.

"Every model is wrong, but some are useful"

While it's technically correct that the customer is not always right. It is useful to push this mindset on employees who directly interact with costumers. Leaving to your employees to figure the gray areas by themselves my cause you a larger net headache than telling them there's no exceptions, when it might not always be true.

This is to be expected. Even for isp bandwidth 5% of the customers use 95% of the bandwidth. But like internet bandwidths, the 5% that use the most are also the most vocal. People communicate and the bigger pain they are, the more they communicate with others.

There will always be those few customers you are better of losing. But I don't think you want to dismiss a rude customer too quickly. I notice that many customers will initially approach a complaint or support need with rudeness/hostility, as they think it is more likely to get attention or to emphasize how much they have been put out. I often find that they can be quickly disarmed and be very nice to work with if you take the "kill 'em with kindness" approach. Don't go as far as to always say "you are right," but let them know you want to help them, even if they are not a delight to work with. These customers can become your biggest advocates.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com