The Customer Is Not Always Right
By: Travis Hubbard
Tags: Money, Technology, Software Development, Entrepreneurship, Business

You will get jacked up if you try to make everyone happy.

My Mom gets sick right before major holidays.

I’m convinced that this is because of one thing: she feels it is her personal responsibility to make everyone happy.

While making everyone happy might be a decent goal for a Mom, it’s not good for business.

People are going to get pissed off at you for something, no matter how hard you try.

And you have to be OK with letting them go.

But the customer is always right. Right?

A friend of mine owns an awesome restaurant in our town. He and his family came over for dinner and a little swimming pool time on Labor Day weekend.

I find it incredibly intimidating to prepare cheeseburgers for a guy that is probably one of the best Thai chefs in my town, but whatever. He loves cheeseburgers!

As the afternoon progressed, and more drinks were consumed, the conversation ultimately turned to business.

How’s business?

Like many restaurants (that are surviving during the lock downs), he has closed his dining room, and me might keep it closed forever. He is doing a brisk takeout business, and doesn’t see the need to reopen the dining area just yet.

Keeping the dining room closed to customers has simplified his operations tremendously (no dining room to clean, no payroll, lower utility bills, etc.)

A curious phenomenon is that customers seem to always know what’s best for your business.

You know…if you’d stay open until 9 it would be more convenient for me. (Yeah, but I like to see my kids now and then.)

You don’t have any gluten free options? Then I’m taking my business elsewhere. (OK, but if you are allergic to gluten, Chinese/Thai food might not be your thing.)

Without being a complete tool, he’s given up on trying to please every customer. He now gladly recommends other restaurants in town that might be more suitable for the customer with the issue.

He fires his customers! So funny.

But the laughter (in my head) fell silent when I remembered a customer I had, and the time our relationship went south.

My best customer became a nightmare.

I started doing some freelance project management work a few years ago.

I remember being so pumped when I got my first customer. We started out with a few hours a week, then eventually turned into me managing the development and maintenance of two massive web applications.

I found graphic designers, programmers, user interface types, and a system administrator that could make AWS do magic. We put together a killer site, then the owner wanted a “few simple changes”.

Can you just move this row of buttons to the side, then change the background colors these few areas, and I think the workflow needs to be different that what we agreed to last month. That should be pretty easy right?

The first time this happened, it was no big deal.

The second time it happened I explained that everyone on the team was an independent contractor and had other work lined up. We can make the changes but it would come with an increased cost.

He flipped.

Long story short, it was a shit show.

The bottom line.

Business is hard enough, don’t make it more difficult by trying to make every customer that comes your way happy.

By all means do what you say you are going to do.

I like to under promise and over deliver, but I document my promises and make sure that the customer agrees to what it is we are setting out to accomplish.

Try to make your customers happy.

I’ve worked myself into a hole more than once just to make a customer happy. There is incredible value in doing everything you can to make a relationship work. The better the relationship, the more likely it is you are going to get a good reference, follow on, or whatever. Plus it’s just good to put that positivity out into the world.

But when things go south, and you’ve exhausted all options to keep things positive, it might be time to wrap things up and send them packing.

Don’t let the guilt consume you and make you do things you’ll kick yourself for later.