Customers Who Cry "This Is Customer Service!" Thinking It Automatically Makes Them Right? (employee, owner)

[jimmy12345678]

I've both seen in person and watched videos online of irate customers who were in the wrong thinking that crying "This is customer service?" or some other sentiment with the idea of "the customer is always right" behind it automatically makes them right, and I have no qualms about telling them that they aren't!

Some customers think that a business owes them the world and must give into their way simply because they give them some of their money. While I'll agree that you should do your best to serve the customer and make them happy, some people are unable to be pleased and need to be told to GTFO and that they aren't getting their way no matter how much they whine and cry.

How would you deal with a customer like this? What is the appropriate response? And any self-employed people, have you ever had to "fire" a customer because they were unreasonable or unbearable?

[Torontobase]

I can't handle rude, out of line customers and the worst part of my job is that I have to if I want to keep my job.
This is why I hate my job and not much out there to move on to something else.

[elhelmete]

Find a different line of work?

[tnff]

I'm curious, how will you handle things when you finally get the garage you want and have six or seven people who work for you depending on the job being there, and you have monthly bills that have to be paid, and at least one of those employees refused to do anything you tell him because you're an "authority figure" and decides he doesn't need to put up with the customer and sends a couple thousand dollar job out the door and forget that repeat business.


You need that income or you're out of business. You need employees working on what you need them working on, not what they want to do. That employee affects not just himself, but costs you and every other employee working for you potential income.


You're the boss. You have responsibility for more than yourself. How would you answer your own question?

[PriscillaVanilla]

I'd try to learn more about what the customer is upset and if they really are entitled to some compensation, before jumping to conclusions.


If you work somewhere that a lot of customers get angry, then the business is probably screwing people over.

[MongooseHugger]

Sometimes customers can be downright a pain in the butt. While doing my temp job answering emails for a company in California, some guy from Canada kept saying he thought the package was taking too long and demanded to know tracking and said he couldn't find it. I said that we didn't offer tracking (that's the company's fault, not mine, though I didn't tell him that, of course). He started whining about the US postal service being too slow and being upset that we weren't using something else. The emails between us went back and forth. Finally, I emailed back "I'm sorry, but I cannot make the US postal service go any faster" and got told off by both the customer and my supervisor.

What am I supposed to say in situations where there really is no good answer? If I say nothing, I get told off as I'm required to say something. If I say something, I'm most likely going to upset the guy.

BTW, my supervisor was a nice person. I think she was just telling me off for losing my cool. There is a strange feature that almost would let us rate account holders (Don't know what it's for and neither does she.) She said that there were some customers that she dealt with that she'd like to give in the negatives out of five stars.


Another sitaution was where corporate messed up and now we got a ton of angry emails asking why the deal promised for that day had strangely stopped working. Luckily, corporate said that they'd deal with it and for us to leave those emails alone. But what are workers supposed to do in situations where CORPORATE messes up, it's totally out of your hands, and yet they WOULD leae YOU to take the heat for it?

[MLSFan]

You aren't obligated to be polite... but they aren't obligated to shop there either

if they don't spend money there, boss doesn't have the money to employ you

yes, business owners can choose who they do business with, they pick their vendors and select customers if freelancing, but if you can't get enough work, you have a hobby and not a business

why do people think being a business owner means you don't have to deal with rude people? You get twice as many rude people to deal with, from both ends, the customers/vendors/regulators and then your own employees are rude as well

[sandsthetime]

Originally Posted by MongooseHugger

Sometimes customers can be downright a pain in the butt.

Being a customer service rep sucks in today's entitlement culture (and that includes people of ALL age groups). You've got people wanting discounts for ALL kinds of stupid reasons. "It's my birthday, why can't I get $10 off?" And then you've got people trying to use expired coupons and use excuses like senior citizen discounts, military discounts, etc. Even if your company doesn't offer a military discount, you've got a customer berating you because "everyone else gives me a military discount but you can't? Do you not respect our military?"

Customer service will teach you a lot about how crappy people are in this day and age.

[CGab]

I work in insurance and customers can get irate if a claim or service doesn’t go their way. As the agent I really have little to no authority over what a claims adjuster or an underwriter decides to do. I explain to them that they can tell me why they are right all day, but if an adjuster or an underwriter sees it differently there’s absolutely nothing I can do about it as the company has policies and procedures in place for a reason and they rarely make exceptions no matter how much someone screams.

Anytime you work with the public you are going to come across crazy people eventually!

[MLSFan]

Originally Posted by CGab

Anytime you work with the public you are going to come across crazy people eventually!

at least when you work with crazy people, they know the are crazy