Customer service: Why the customer is not always right

I believe that the founder of 'customer service' in America is Ray Kroc, the founder of McDonald's.

His belief was 'Take care of the customer, and the customer will take care of the business.'

Given that we live in a litigious society in which anything is open to interpretation, I ask for opinions on this question:

'Is customer service about serving the customer (i.e. what the customer needs), or giving the customer what they asked for?'

As someone who worked in all levels of customer service from a mascot at FAO Schwarz to Disney & GM tradeshows to AIG insurance claims, I believe customer service has turned into 'serving the customer' over the years, where it once was, 'Give them what they asked for' or 'The customer is always right.' I also believe that the most effective customer service is given by good people who know what is best for the customer and through their actions, look out for the well-being of their customer.

In truth, I have found that the customer is almost never right. That may sound like a harsh statement, but as the US has become a nation of consumers, we somewhat lost the right to say that we know what is best for us. The natural evolution of a successful business is that the more success it achieves, the larger the responsibility the business has to its customers to be faster with making more of the same product. However, the customer rarely understands what business decisions must be made to make that happen for everyone.

I use an example from years ago, and will use one related to the Voice123 casting system:

In the 1950's, Ray Kroc introduced the 'drive-thru window' at McDonald's. They had to because the demand for their hamburgers was rapidly increasing. As many customers of that time were used to pulling up to hamburger joints and having a waitress come out to them at their cars, they no longer understood that for the business model of McDonald's, this was no longer practical. Ray Kroc invented the 'drive thru window'. The idea did not catch on so quickly. The idea was:

Drive to a small speakerphone, and place the order. Then, drive to a window and pick it up.

Sounds simple now, but back then it was very foreign to the customer. Naturally, there were people who would place the order at the speakerphone, and then wait for a waitress to come out and bring it to them. However, the 'drive thru' did not work that way, so there were many who believed it was poor customer service that no one came out to the car and told them to go to the next window. From a business standpoint, that would make no sense given that you could not have cooks or cashiers running outside every second, if you wanted the drive thru to achieve its goal of being the fastest way to get a McDonald's hamburger.

Given the success of McDonald's, I doubt this means they had 'poor customer service'. In fact, present day, the last time I passed by a McDonald's on a Saturday at 12pm, the drive thru line is now too long, so maybe the idea caught on too well? Who knows...but any decision they make to change it, the customer will surely not understand because 'change' is the most unsettling aspect of life. Did you know...moving to a new house is the 2nd most stressful 'life event' next to someone dying?

Anyway...I use such an example based around what I witnessed since my time here at Voice123, as an employee with the bird's eye view of everything being said and done by talents and voice seekers.

The beginning of Voice123 was about a change. The normal way of things required that phone calls be made to talents, so people who represent them could tell them about possible jobs. Yet now, with Voice123, they could go through the drive thru as many times as they wanted to get hamburgers.

This idea was received well by many. The problem with this...as cliche as it may sound...'The path to excess leads to the road to ruin.'

The customer was paying to join Voice123 to audition, but they were ignoring the needs of the other customer, the voice seeker (many of them...not all). What transpired was that the 'voice seeker' was tired of the bad auditions they were getting, and thought the quality was terrible, and that using Voice123 no longer saved them time like it had originally. The 'Ray Kroc' in this story, Alex Torrenegra, created a system called SmartCast, and for the first time since Voice123 started, voice talents had to limit themselves according to a computer program which gave them all the information as to what they were doing. This idea was very foreign to them, as expected.

A handful of them complained heavily, with no regret or remorse, as to the very reasons why a computer should not decide how they get invited. Yet, much like the guy at the drive-thru window beeping his horn waiting for his hamburger, these customers failed to realize that humans control and create computers, so the very power to 'drive to the next window' is theirs. In many cases, help was offered, but because we did not get rid of the drive thru window, people believed it was poor customer service.

Nothing could be further from the truth.


I use this to illustrate my point, that unfortunately, 'the customer is not always right'. Beyond the opinions of 'what someone wants' lives the beast of 'what someone can actually give you to stay in business'. This does not make the business 'bad' by any means, but it does mean that these days, each business offers a 'product' and if that 'product' is not what the customer wants, the customer may very well find him or herself at a McDonald's drive thru, asking for 'onion rings' simply because another business offers it. If we dont have onion rings, we just dont offer it, and by all means, this does not make the customer right nor does it automatically make the other business the 'competition', simply because they have a drive thru window too.

As I have witnessed through my years in customer service, the less a customer is informed about how one does business, and why, the less qualified they become to ask for a change. Usually, the one's who enforce change lead by example, and a business does its best to shape its model around the needs of the best customers who made the business successful.

The key to making or breaking rules, is first learning the rules. These customers who do so, will find themselves serviced (couldn't think of a better word) more than those who blindly ask for change in something they know very little about. Their lack of knowledge will prove to be the problem in misunderstanding when they have actually been served for his/her betterment.

One final example...

Did you ever think that the best customer service in the world, would be for you to go into a bank, and ask for money, then have them give it to you with no questions as to how you could pay it back? Sounds crazy? Well, it happened in this country, and look at the mess we are in.

Alas...the customer is not always right because they just want what they want, when they want it. That is not always possible.

Thank you...please drive to the next window.

"If I asked people what they wanted, they would have said 'faster horses'." - Henry Ford