When Customers Are Wrong, What Should Customer Service Do? Keep Serving Customers.

Do you ever wonder why irons come with a warning to not iron clothes while wearing them?

The customer is not always right, but proving the customer wrong doesn’t win the customer and will most likely cause you to lose future business.

My friend and customer experience expert Micah Solomon recently shared his own experience as a customer in The Customer’s Often Wrong: What’s A Customer Service Professional To Do?

We’ve all been there. Customers break things. Customers mess up. Customers don’t read instructions and misunderstand even some of the most basic principles of the universe.

Customers stand on principle, and ceremony, and lose track of their initial complaint in the flurry of ego protection and extraneous issues that cloud their minds. Lose track of the proportion of harm they’ve suffered compared to all their blessings in the world.

Being human, none of us ever sees the same situation exactly the same as another member of our species.  This reality includes customers and their particular, inevitably partially flawed, perspectives.

In customer service, it helps to consider yourself as a customer consultant. Customers approach their product or service purchase as an investment and anytime they feel like their investment isn’t paying out like they expected, they’ll be upset.

Instead of picking sides, state the obvious problem and propose more alternative solutions. Customers are often upset because they see working with customer service as doing battle with the enemy. When customer service takes a participatory role and acts as a liaison, concierge, or consultant, they show customers that they are allies in helping the customer get the most from the product or service.