Singapore Changi Airport Terminal 3

Cus­tomers Are Always Right, Right? Or Are They?

There is a rea­son why the mantra, “cus­tomers are always right” or, “cus­tomer is king” is pounded into the heads of sales­peo­ple all around the world. It’s because cus­tomers are the lifeblood of every busi­ness. So, whether cus­tomers have earned the right to be treated like kings, or are cer­ti­fi­ably wrong, is incon­se­quen­tial. The didac­tic mantra stays.

I must admit though, that I had a prob­lem under­stand­ing this when I tried my hand at being a sales engi­neer at Sennheiser. When faced with cus­tomers whose greed con­tin­u­ally sought an account­ing of var­ied pro­por­tions — often beyond the realms of what was rea­son­able — I sug­gested they buy from another com­pany. I sim­ply couldn’t afford the lux­ury of pil­ing on more value and dis­counts than what my regional man­ager had instructed me with.

If I had stuck to the mantra, I prob­a­bly would have been left with enough change at the end of the month to treat myself to a cheese­burger at Macs. I wasn’t going to let that hap­pen. I wasn’t going to set­tle for any­thing less than a dou­ble turkey club sandwich.

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