| 25 April 2004 at 21.57.17 ZuluTime
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Posted by Gremlin [24.8.27.194 - c-24-8-27-194.client.comcast.net] on 25 April 2004 at 21.57.17 ZuluTime:
In Reply to: Re: One of those days posted by Damien on 25 April 2004 at 19.47.04 ZuluTime:
I have no idea where Customericans came from, exactly. I was about to type something entirely else when it just sorta...happened. It's neat, though; I'll leave it there.
Anyway: the customer is always right has always been a euphemism for the customer is likely a scheming moron, but he's kinda critical if we feel like staying in business. Obviously, the customer is not always right; but, a company wishing to keep a customer will pretend that he is.
That I, of all customers, happen to be, in this case, the fuck right is largely immaterial to the whole mantra. That I'm right is a matter of fact; that any given customer is right in any given instance is a matter of tact.
Pizza Slut happens to be a neat example. Whether I'd expect a RedRoof to deliver is beside the point; but I did get a pizza recently which failed to thrill me completely; I mentioned it to them, and they fronted me credit for a free one the next time I called. Coca-cola somehow connected Hunter to a TwelvePack of substandardish quality [I don't dig Coke much, but, apparently, it was worse than usual], and they sent her coupons to go get free Coke from any store selling the stuff. Oh, and, my personal favourite: I'm not only the owner of Wasted, Inc.; I'm also a client; we recently picked up three or four hundred bucks worth of stuff--mostly as prototypes to ensure that nothing happened to suck; when some of it did, in fact, suck--primarily my fault, off the record--I fixed the little graphics problems, and Hunter EMailed CafePress.com [to whom all this stuff is outsourced] and, without any measurable downtime, CP EMailed her back, apologising for any problems and promising to fix the problem immediately; two days later, they'd AirMailed out fixed duplicates of everything we'd ordered--even the stuff which wasn't wrong the first time.
So, sometimes, the customer is still always right, whether the customer happens to be a complete fucking idiot or not. Because, sometimes, companies would prefer to keep a dumb customer over having no customers at all.
--Gremlin