The Customer is always right.
The customer's needs always come first.

Wrong. That's "old school".

That worked great in the old days but things are really different now.
In my company, we've been able to delegate the duties of the manager down to each individual to use as necessary when dealing with customers.

Good help is hard to find so how is that possible?

First you have to start with a good quality team. The scouting and interview process is not the place to take shortcuts with new team members/employees.
You can empower a mediocre employee but that won't work very well and you the manager will just have to micromanage them to get the desired end result.
How then can you empower your team?

In our business we have regular meetings where we constantly remind our team haw much we love that they are part of our team. We thank them and tell them we appreciate them. We provide classes on how to deal with challenging customer relations situations with role playing that may arise. We also work with the technical skills that are needed to help them stay on top of their game. Once we as a company have invested in our team and our teams education and professionalism, we are then ready to empower them.

Our company makes it a point to let the team know that the customer is not always right and that the customer's needs do not always come first. The Needs of our team come first. Why you ask? Because our team cannot give 100 percent to the customer unless they are feeling 100 percent. We invest in our team and that includes their personal well being which translates into their professional well being.

When our team is 100 percent. They are ready to accept the responsibility of being empowered to take the customer service to that next level. Our business has enjoyed a greater level of customer service satisfaction which has translated to our business doubling in a matter of three months after empowering our team with our new culture where the team's (employee's) needs come first.

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