| I stand to be corrected but I disagree with that cliche that customers are always right, I will stand before God on judgment day to argue this out. E sure for me. (Photo credit: Wande’s whatsapp status) |
There are lots of things we’ve found ways to include in our existence constitution without actually talking about them, many are wrong clichés especially as Nigerians, like someone waking up to think “bogus” means big and people ran with it without checking…
One of those is the age-long saying: “customer is always right”, which gives stupid people the free pass to get away with so many impunity, I am here to tell you today that customers are not always right and more than half the time, they’re wrong and I will happily tell them.
As an agency man, I’ve been on the receiving end of lots of bashings from clients, my hands are up in the air for days we didn’t come correct which I can count with fingers on just one hand, but for uncountable number of days we’ve had to cover up for clients’ ineptitude simply because someone thinks they’re always right.
I understand the place of people management and the will to survive in a saturated terrain where there are other people waiting to do what you do and even charge for less, but for how long are we going to continue sleep with pains because we can’t call out client’s shenanigans? I digress.
I heard the voice note of a frustrated vendor one time like that, recounting how a supposed customer wasted her time without remorse; she’s into children clothing, this man made her send tons of samples in images and videos, made her calculate the cost of the items he picked and then disappeared…
A lot of people think they’re doing vendors favors when they buy from them, they take that as liberty to be rude to them and most times have it at the back of their filthy minds that the vendor can’t talk back, after all… the rude customer is always right or is that not what the street school teaches?
Let’s talk about those that will send in tons of inquiries, pretending like they’re serious and even get angry when they don’t get quick responses only for them to disappear with the famous, ever reliable discharge line “I will get back to you”, and you don’t think God will judge you?
Make no mistakes, some vendors are annoyingly crappy and I’ve talked about some of them in the past, but today is the turn of you that think you’re the all in all simply because you’re paying for a product or service, what makes you think you have the right to be rude to a vendor?
I was going to take a script writing gig from a popular filmmaker. She had an idea of the kind of story she was looking for and I felt the Nigerian market wouldn’t jump on that, she appeared like she didn’t want an advice, she just wanted it her way and heck, no worries about that…
We agreed on terms and I told her it would take two weeks to deliver the story, then she went “I have worked with the best writers in the industry and they didn’t waste my time, two weeks for what?” I didn’t reply that particular message because I was going to give her a long rope…
She called the following morning to ask for my account details, only rats fall for such poisoned chalice, I asked if she was cool with the two weeks, she sent me a voice notes of about 21minutes, ranting about how she was doing me a favor and how I dare not miss the opportunity to work with her…
Again, I didn’t respond to the voice note and waited for her to buzz again, she did at a time I was in a meeting and I responded with an automatic message of “I’ll call you back”, she didn’t stop calling until I had to go on airplane mode, at that point I knew it was time to remind her she’s not even F rated producer lol.
I called after my meeting and she was overbearing, didn’t listen to me and was only interested in hearing herself, of course I reminded her of the fact that she would never get a better writer, I walked from it and she hasn’t stopped trying to reach out… That’s the end of that.
Customers are not always right, some of them are annoying and plainly stupid, there’s so much to talk about in this regard but I figured the “shalaye” is getting too much so I’ll just ask you, do you agree with me that the cliché is false? What is your experience with these funny customers? Balance me…
