Did you ever read a story about how a “customer” treated someone so poorly that it made your blood boil? There’s a better than even chance that the person telling the story was lying their ass off. Facts were distorted, descriptions are embellished, some things become outright fabricated.
That’s what happens when you make assholes mad at you.
It’s easy- how many reviews has that person written? How many are negative? If you saw one of my Reviews on TripAdvisor, Yelp or Amazon you could see the rare negative review is balanced by dozens of favorable reviews.
If it that person’s only review, it quite possible it’s bogus.
So how does that work with your boss? Or do you actually find control when dealing with someone who can hurt you back?
When* my boss* is having a bad day or when* I* am having a bad day?
Simple, we both know the other is a hard-working professional and assume it’s a bad day moment.
Customers are definitely NOT always right. An asshole is an asshole and an employee shouldn’t have to put up with unwarranted abuse. Luckily, most companies have an avenue of recourse, usually with a manager. I only worked for one company that didn’t, and I ended up stepping into a situation between a customer and the receptionist, which ended in me telling him he was about to get his ass kicked unless he departed. I was sales staff at the time, but there were plenty of witnesses who backed me up.
Huh. And yet, the place I was referring to is going stronger than ever, ten years later. Still the same boss, AFAIK.
Well yes. Obviously.
But good business means identifying the people that are more trouble than they’re worth - the ones that upset your other patrons, the ones that constantly complain about whatever BS they can come up with just to get free stuff, the ones that are just downright abusive - and showing them the door. Certain customers will just cost you money, drag your business down and/or create a toxic environment. It’s just good business sense to get rid of them.
If you ever work retail or service, you quickly develop a thick skin, and people "just having “one of those days” barely even register. Yes, a business that bans people just for a little bit of attitude won’t last long, but business owners like that are rare IME.
When I have been a manager, I have had one iron clad rule. The customer is not allowed to yell at my minions. You can yell at me, but not my minions.
Yell at them you will be shown the door.
I had one customer yelling at me, which is OK, but he would not settle down and said at the top of his lungs “You will have to call the police to get me to leave”
When I turned to my assistants, all four of them had big smiles and the phones in their hands. 
We were happy to oblige him, after all the customer is always right.
I have a friend who’s been extremely successful (started with $60K, now worth ~15 million) as a small business owner (large B&B + rental properties) who would sharply disagree with this. He’s very much of the view that good employees are like gold, and abusive customers are best dealt with by encouraging them to leave and bedevil any competitors foolish enough to believe that “the customer is always right”.
He doesn’t abuse the bad customers - the standard response is along the lines of “It looks as if we can’t meet your needs.” But he’ll not tolerate abuse of his employees - and he’s had a number of abusive customers calm down, apologize, and praise him for sticking up for his employees.
Hampton Inns have a 100% guarantee, that if you are not happy, then you don’t pay. A very close friend of mine worked at a Hampton for 2 or 3 years, and finally quit out of frustration because of the number of people abusing this policy:
The blow drier didn’t work.
There were kids running in the hall all night.
The A/C was noisy.
etc, etc, etc.
She knew these people were simply taking advantage to the policy, but she had to smile, apologize on behalf of Hampton, and otherwise, keep her mouth shut. And she’s not the kind of person to keep her mouth shut!
I work in a call center and profanity is the one circumstance (well other than an emergency evacuation) were we can just hang up on a caller (well, after 2 warnings).
I blame it on the corporate office. They believe that you can give the customer what ever they want and still make a profit. But when you let a customer use merchandise and then return their money time after time and the customer seldom makes a purchase and keeps it, the truth is they are costing the company more money than they are leaving. But upper management wants no complaints.
I worked for a department store where women would order and use $200 to $500 dresses. Wear the dress to a function spill wine on them and on Monday return the dress to the store for a refund. And get it. The dress could not be resold because of the condition it was returned. The customers reason for returning the dress, “my husband didn’t like the dress”.
My son was a store manager and he had to accept bogus returns or face a chewing out by his DM because he got a complaint. He got chewed out one time for not refunding the customer’s money for an item that he did not carry in his store. And the complaints count against his bonus.
As a honest customer this make me mad because the stores have to raise their prices to cover the losses from the rip off customers.
I agree that it might have to do with the worry about reviews posted on the internet.
I work in a client servicing role and on the (fortunately very rare) occasions when a client swears, we are allowed to terminate the call (or in the case of written correspondence, a manager will write back with a curt message saying this will not be tolerated. On the even rarer occasions when a client is consistently, completely unreasonable, they will be asked to take their business elsewhere.
I’m a cashier at a discount store. Let me tell you a story:
Customer is talking on cell phone while I ring her up. I absolutely hate this, but say nothing. When it comes time to pay, she takes five minutes going through her purse before realizing she forgot her credit card! The person behind her makes some nasty comments. I say absolutely nothing.
She storms out to the car and tells her boyfriend that “I forgot my credit card and the cashier yelled and swore at me.” Boyfriend storms into the store with the girlfriend behind him saying “Let’s just leave. Let it go.” He faces me and screams “Why the fuck were you yelling and swearing at my girlfriend?”
My manager and one of the store’s owners are standing by my register. They both turn to the scene with their mouths open. One of our major rules is that, when any yelling is heard, all the floor workers and managers immediately drop whatever they are doing and go to the scene.
I immediately face the asshole and say “I was not yelling and swearing at your girlfriend. And you have no right to come in here yelling and swearing, even if I were.” He immediately deflates and they leave.
Customer is always right my ass.
ETA: Several times when a customer is yelling and swearing, I tell them in a very calm, quiet voice “You can speak in a normal tone and without the profanity. There is no need for that type of language.” It usually makes the person realize they are being an ass.
Customers get away with it because it is easier to assume the company will make money off that person if they are satisfied than doing an in depth analysis of their spending history with the company.
Home Depot, guy provides his own measurements for a house he’s building. He orders 70k in windows. They come in and he takes them to the jobsite. He comes back with them saying they are the wrong size and wants his money back. Special orders are subject to a 25% restocking fee. He is unwilling to accept that but is willing to keep them if we refund him 50%.
Most managers would just negotiate with him. I pull his purchase history. In his entire history of purchases, we’d never made a profit. He always got discounts he didn’t even deserve. My call was he can accept a 25% restocking fee or he can keep them. That’s it. If he says he’ll never do business with us again we thank him. We don’t pay customers to shop with us.
In my past retail management career I would find the 80-20 rule for “undesirable” customers held true. That is 20% of your customers caused 80% of your headaches, were unprofitable, and wasted resources. If we could identify these repeat “undesirables” we weren’t supposed to be afraid to fire them.
These would be people that would consistently abuse the generous return policy (buy it, use it, return it, over and over), were nasty to staff and complained about them in order to obtain discounts repeatedly, were not tech savy enough to read an owner’s manual and repeatedly took up employee’s time to teach them how to hook up / use their item.
We found that as soon as you gave an inch in bending policy word spread fast and everyone and their brother would line up to exploit that inch. Building our customer base with “good” customers was more important than having “all” the customers.
No, the customer is not always right. I’ve had customers physically assault me by grabbing my neck. As a manager, I’ve fired a customer for gross abuse of my employees.
If it makes her feel any better any time someone gets their 100% back it goes into a tracking database. If they consistently abuse the guarantee they’re asked to take their business elsewhere.
This is easy. Just write a email to your boss about that customer. Ask if she should continue to get refunds. No matter his response, you’re in the clear.
I’m actually amazed that people actually put weight on individual reviews; my typical approach is to look at the distribution by number of stars. If they’re heavily weighted to one value, that’s worth knowing. I also tend to look at the really bad ones to see WHY the item/place/service is being panned so badly. About half of the one-star reviews I read are for things that are idiotic- “the server was bad, so the entire chain sucks and I’m never coming back”. Or “This wafflemaker sucks; the waffles are like an inch thick!” (for a Belgian wafflemaker!).
I usually also gaze upon the 5 star reviews just to make sure someone hasn’t been stuffing the ballot box, so to speak.