Are customers always right? Not exactly. But does that mean they are always wrong? Not exactly too. However, one important thing which every business needs to know is that, they are the one who bring revenues to your business. They are the one who keep your business alive.

I think that reason alone is enough for you to keep your patience when dealing with them. But rather than just tolerating them, maybe it’s better for us to think and look at things from the customers’ perspective. It’ll also be easier that way since tolerating cannot last forever.

Today a fellow blogger Apple talked about “Customer is always right“. Actually, I’ve seen pretty nasty and unreasonable customers though I have not dealt with them personally before. I must admit that some of them are indeed notoriously unreasonable and don’t make sense at all. But there are times when we ourselves are customers.

For example, a customer who claims the car is having some engine problems might not know the problem actually has something to do with the car brake because he is not the mechanic. He might act smart and keep insisting it is the engine problem, but that is based on his perspective. From our perspective, we should understand that this customer knows nothing about the problem and that is why he comes to us though it might require some efforts to convince him.

Similarly, someone who wants the IT system to look like this might not know it is actually not the best way to do it. He just does not know any other way. What we can do is to provide examples and let the customer know the best way to do it aka our recommendation but if he does not want to change, then we will have to follow what he wants. He’s the one paying the bill after all.

What I want to say here is that one needs to be patience when dealing with customers especially the older customers. I know some of them are very arrogant but they approach you for a reason – they need your help. We ourselves are customers to other businesses. We ourselves have been in those situation and believe me, the idiotic customers of yours? We might look that way to other people too.

However, there are times when some customers are very nasty and rude. They might scold you for their own mistakes. That is when you need to tolerate. But I do understand that everyone has a limit. So if you can’t stand it anymore and this customer is just too rude and unreasonable, feel free to cut him off. It might be too expensive for your business to continue retaining this customer.