by Dawn Hawkins

Created on: January 19, 2010

The old saying is “the customer is always right”. That is true to an extent. Customers are always right because customers are the ones who ultimately pay the bills. If you don’t have customers, you don’t have money. That is the bottom line. When customers are wrong, they are still right. That is the rule of thumb for customer service representatives.

There are times that a customer is wrong and you simply can’t do anything to help them. It is important to not make the customer feel as though they are wrong though. You can do that but it takes a little bit of imagination to pull it off. Customers who insist on getting their way even when there is no way to give them their way may get lost.

You can’t please everyone no matter how hard you try. If a customer is insisting on getting something that is far beyond what you can do for him/her, the customer is wrong. The customer is wrong when he/she calls a business and begins to yell and cuss at the person on the other end of the line. Customers are wrong when they call and lie about not getting a product. There are a thousand scenarios in which the customer can be wrong.

Even in the above situations, the customer who is wrong is still right. If you are a customer service representative, you have had to deal with such difficult customers as this. There is no pleasing them. You can offer them an alternative to fix the problem and they won’t like it. You tell them you can replace the product and they don’t want to do that. You tell them that you simply can’t refund their money and they definitely don’t like that. The only thing you have left to do is pass them to a supervisor. The cycle begins again. The customer is trying to wear you down and eventually they probably will.

Most customers will be decent. There are those that will seem to make a point of being wrong just so they can irritate you into losing your temper. Don’t let them get to you. Stay businesslike and professional. If there doesn’t seem to be a solution, pass it to a supervisor. That is what your supervisor is there for. Don’t waste any more time on a difficult customer than you have to. It will all result in the same action, passing it on to someone above you.

Learn more about this author, Dawn Hawkins.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.