The customer is always right, right?

This phrase began in an age where caveat emptor, or “Let the buyer beware,” mentality reigned supreme, leading to customer dissatisfaction. In theory, it’s true. You are there to offer a good or service and the customer is there to purchase it. But in practice, the phrase leads to numerous issues.

Many times we will receive an inquiry with a series of specifications which we know don’t fit a particular technology or application. If we applied “the customer is right” in every circumstance, we would build to that spec without questioning them. This often puts not only the customer, but the manufacturer at risk.

We encourage our sales and customer service team to review everything and respectfully question what looks to be an error. It may be that the spec was copied from another application and not reviewed, or the engineer has a mechanical or electrical background but not in thermal.

Handled properly, we use our expertise to guide them to a solution that is optimized for their application. It prevents product development with multiple rounds of sampling and testing if we can “help” the customer be right. Later, it eliminates the issue of their “finger pointing”, especially if there was a known issue that wasn’t brought up and addressed.

It is true that without customers, you wouldn’t have a business. But that shouldn’t leave businesses powerless to choose to no longer provide products or services for a customer when they can no longer be mutually beneficial. Sometimes, the customer is wrong, and that’s okay. Our job, and your job, is to help the customer be right.