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- The Customer Is Always Wrong
You and your people are stressed out — and burnt out.
Here’s some real help, not just platitudes.
Ambr is your essential co-pilot in these challenging times.
What if your managers could identify and resolve emerging issues early on, before people burn out and leave?
Give your managers the upper hand in nurturing a resilient and robust work culture.
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In this issue: The Customer Is Always… Wrong?
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Even the Right Customer Is Very Often Wrong. Here’s Why.
If you’re American or even spent much time in America, you know the cardinal rule…
Repeat after me… The Customer is ALWAYS RIGHT.
Nothing controversial there.
Pretty intuitive sort of thing.
Who could possible argue.
And please don’t get me wrong.
Living in Israel, where there’s no such ethos, I often miss good old American customer service.
Hell, over here, the customer’s quite often always WRONG!
Let me explain.
Maybe it’s the extreme directness, the in-your-face culture, the live-now-because-you-could-be-gone-in-a-second sensibility, the largely missing politeness of the Israeli public.
Whatever it is, my wife (too) often jokes about the biggest charm of living in Israel…
CUSTOMER. SERVICE.
Not more than lip service to “call you back” if you don’t speak Hebrew well (as a Russian or English, never mind Spanish or French or other language speaker).
No one ever calls back.
Spending hours on the phone with the bank, the electricity company, at city hall to ask about real estate tax.
The Kafkaesque bureaucracy that send you to hell as soon as you arrive, then to other bureaucrats who openly don’t give a shit about helping you.
Because the #LaborUnion (Histadrut) is a mentality, a way of life, a way of securing a safe perch, collecting a salary and not moving a finger to help those truly in need.
That begs the question, how the hell did I (of all people, bon in the Soviet Union and reared in Red America, with its animus against labor unions)… end up in a union myself?!
[Well, I got a job in Israel. It comes with the territory, there’s no choice but to join. But I’ve written about that already.]
So… customer service.
Yeah, there’s no shortage of rightful, deserved bitching and moaning to be had against the lack of care and customer focus here in Israel.
But I suppose once you’re not in the thick of all that waiting and those calls and all those brazen-faced government employees who go out of their way to make you feel ashamed for not knowing something, who give pro-actively wrong directions, who send you around in circles, chasing your tail…
You actually realize that the stress and wasted time and fuel and yelling and bitching and moaning and frantic FB and WhatsApp group posting are…
Perhaps not quite therapeutic. Not quite charming.
Maybe they’re an inoculation of sorts, a prophylactic practice.
No, not for improving your people skills or patience, exactly.
There’s a golden lesson in all the chaos of living here and dealing with brazen incompetence.
And the lesson isn’t for business, in this case.
It’s for your own business, actually, if anything.
Let me explain.
Let’s flip the script a minute.
So let’s say you’re a good, solid, proper, red-blooded American.
Reared on corn syrup and corn-fed beef and all that jazz.
You’ve got that hallowed expectation of always being right as a customer.
But the truth is, you’ll probably have to return the favor sooner than later.
What do I mean?
Well, you take a job or start a business.
You’ll sooner or later have to sell yourself in some way.
You’ll have to convince someone that your experience is great for a job (in an interview).
You’ll have to convince someone to buy from you or your company.
You’ll have to convince someone to marry you at some point, quite likely.
You’ll have to “get buy-in,” “be persuasive,” “accommodate others” and all of that.
Shit. Maybe you’re not salesman/woman material.
Still, no choice. Life is like that.
What does mean now?
Well, same thing.
If the customer is always right and you have to convince, coax, direct, persuade the customer (boss, client, investor, etc.), you will have to go by the same exactly rule - the CUSTOMER’S ALWAYS RIGHT.
Meaning you’ll likely go far out of your way to avoid conflict, to accommodate him or her, to bend over backwards just to make sure that you follow the golden rule.
Now bring a born-and-raised Israeli into America.
He or she grew up believing the exact opposite.
The customer’s always wrong!
Stick him or her in a mall in middle America and you get…
The best-performing salesmen and women anywhere.
Coincidence? I think NOT.
But why?!
The customer’s always wrong.
They don’t take no for an answer.
No is just the start of the conversation, not the end, as “proper” Americans think.
Frankly, if you’re from a place surrounded by enemies, where you have to serve in the army to protect your country and people from existential threats, a place used to making gold from lead (read up on Israeli’s history, if you don’t know it already. It’s truly something incredible what Israelis have managed to achieve in 75 years since its founding)…
You’re used to not listening to the media (which loves to demonize Israel and Israelis and make us scapegoats for all sorts of craziness).
You’re used to not taking shit from people, because if you did, you would get nowhere fast.
You’re used to pushing back right away.
You’re used to finding all sorts of ways around, under, through or over walls that seems impenetrable and unimpeachable.
You’re used to getting shit done, because ain’t nobody else gonna do it for you.
And of course this means that people are extremely direct, often don’t care much for politeness or formalities, are often cutting in line and otherwise subverting the supposed established order, etc.
And this seems like total anathema to Americans and other Westerners brought up on the more servile sort of mindset, despite their hallowed freedoms.
So what do we all have to learn from this ethos of the customer always being wrong?
Well, it turns out, QUITE a lot.
Especially for our own personal development.
Stay with me here.
Imagine, for a moment, just how many “customers” we all have around us as we go through life.
All people that nominally love us, care for us, want the best for us.
Nominally.
That’s not always strictly the case, even for people that love us, people that know us for a long time, even our close family members and best friends.
It’s not because they’re malevolent or anything, per se.
They just have their own fraught history with you.
They have their own scars and trauma from life, from work, from other people.
And as humans are wont to do, they likely project that trauma, perpetuate that hazing, prolonging suffering, preventing healing both for themselves and for you.
We all know people like that.
Hell, we probably are people like that.
We probably do the same thing to others, to loved ones, friends, people we mentor and advise.
It’s mostly subconscious.
And it’s also incredibly obnoxious.
Because we all presume we understand other people well, especially people we love and care for and know a long time.
So each of us has these inherited (ex officio) — or imposed — stakeholders that do their damndest to shout us into submission, to force us to follow their same path, or the path they think they know best for us.
That extends to all sorts of things, including:
what you should study,
how you should dress,
how you should spend money,
whom you should marry,
what profession you should choose,
what you should strive to be in life,
if and how to worship G-d
The list gets real heavy, real fast.
So heavy, in fact, that we often run away from home when we’re young, just to be able to spread out wings a bit.
But after a while, we regress back toward the baseline.
Whether it’s because of societal expectations, genetics and epigenetics (yep, definitely a big factor), a lower risk profile as we start a family, joining a new community, we tend to double back toward listening to all those incessantly loud customers, or perceived customers (people we think we need to please or pacify in order to get ahead in life).
We scale back our “rebellion” and settle down into very neatly outlined expectations of whom to marry, how much we need to make by age X and Y, how many kids and cars and bedrooms in our house need at a certain stage.
In other words, we all start forgetting one simple and critically important rule.
We are our OWN most important customer, above everyone else.
Sure, put that damn oxygen mask on first.
Sure, a bit of self-care please before caring for others.
None of that losing yourself to please others.
Nothing revolutionary here.
We all know we should.
We all know we must.
But very few of us actually follow through.
And when we follow through, we merely shift the focus to believing that other, new customers are right (gurus selling us stuff, role models that often don’t live up to the very values they preach).
Again, we lose ourselves until the mask slips off, until we see the hypocrisy of all those “leaders” we followed.
The cycle starts again, on to the next level.
More misplaced expectations, more disappointment.
Finally, we realize sometime in middle age that the whole premise of how we were taught to live life was wrong.
“Customer service” is a neat little organizing principle, or moniker, to sublimate the indentured servant mindset lurking under the surface.
“Just do your job” isn’t wrong, of course, when it comes to bureaucracy, but it conveniently hides the pain and cost of conforming to the expectations of others from us, when we’re fundamentally misaligned.
The truth is, most of us don’t even have the right language and psychology to free ourselves from all the societal constructs designed to subjugate us from fulfilling out true purpose in life.
And it’s a 2-way street, as well.
The resistance to change is in a way the very force that creates change.
Without that resistance, the change wouldn’t be nearly as strong or meaningful.
“Failure” is only redirection to something better.
So resistance is good.
Societal norms are meant to cage those not willing to rattle themselves out, as much as they’re meant to steel those that are capable of living with true freedom.
But being open to personal reinvention and true transformation, then actually going through massive change, takes a certain inner resistance to the customer service mentality.
You’re not here to serve any customer other than yourself, in the end.
Sure, there’s your spouse and kids and parents and boss and clients.
But if you don’t serve yourself first and send everyone else to hell when your servility can no longer continue, then you will never free yourself.
You will never find the will, the energy, the stamina, the deep focus and motivation you need to push through all the valleys and hills of self-discovery if you don’t manage to stop serving all the false gods of others’ expectations.
Are there people who mean well and encourage you and push you in the right direction?
Most certainly. Much better than a broken clock being right twice a day, parents, siblings, spouses, kids, bosses, clients and others, most people are some mix of constructive and destructive to us, helpful and obstructive, energizing and demotivating.
And it’s the ebb and flow with a side of helplessness to change that often keeps us from forming out own backbone, from striking out on our own to make our own mistakes and to form our own opinions.
Life breaks the vast majority of us down, slowly, but surely, such that we fall prey to the opinions of others from whom we wouldn’t take any advice.
Our inner resistance crumbles a tiny bit each day.
Only the extreme Odysseus type among us can stay strapped to the mast of the ship for years and decades as the boat sails at a glacial pace past all the Sirens in our world, the ones yelling at us, judging us, trying to dictate how we act, how we spend money - and ultimately, how we see ourselves.
Our resistance wears down. Our bodies and minds wear down from resisting for so long.
The vicious-virtuous cycle of self-image we fall into is the only thing that can jerk us back to conscience, to change, to development as humans and professionals.
It’s f-ing hard.
“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.”
―Ralph Waldo Emerson
But is it impossible?
No, of course not.
It takes a lot of work on yourself, a strict system of organization, constant learning and reinvention, a lot of trauma and pain behind you that you feel you MUST break through, plus a desire to help others like you, traveling the same path, just 2-3 steps behind you.
Does it mean you need to be a contrarian or narcissist asshole?
Certainly not.
You should be seeking the truth within yourself and out in the world.
Does it mean you need to rely on yourself for absolutely everything?
No, not that, either.
But you DO need to rely on yourself to have the high standards, best interests in mind, plus the energy and stamina to implement your own truth in your life, without intercession from anyone or anything else.
As I always say, “Be Your Own Commander-in-Chief.”
Customers may come in all types and sizes and colors and decibel levels.
Many might love you, want the best for you, the whole nine yards.
But if you don’t categorically assume that each one of them is painstakingly wrong about you and what you need, you will get derailed from your purpose, your journey.
I don’t expect you to become Israeli overnight.
But you would benefit a lot from understanding the true motivations and incentives of other people, so you could understand how what they want for — and from — you just isn’t the best thing you, with a high degree of likelihood.
Maybe it means you express your stubbornness more openly.
Maybe it means you pitch your own tent, find your own solution, make your own coffee, whatever it takes.
But you definitely must remember, The Customer is Always Wrong (when the customer isn’t YOU).
Act accordingly.
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We’ve launched the Commander in Chief Community
WHAT’S INSIDE?
Basically, this has all my best stuff, coaching and consulting materials, latest tools, my book split into chapters, with a whole bunch of my best trainings, workshops, writing, podcast episodes you name it.
Oh yeah, the premium stuff?
When you subscribe (and help me pay the damn bills, only fair), you’re gonna get:
1) Group coaching - career, business, life, whatevs
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a. getting promoted,
b. getting paid more,
c. building a 6-figure side business,
d. building a brilliant personal brand.
3) Special discounts for 1-on-1 coaching
You’re gonna LOVE this. Yeah, it’s pretty MASSIVE value, amigo/a.
Time to get off the sidelines.
Like, this is basically all the best stuff I’ve ever produced, with weekly updates and a ton of new stuff.
YEP, IT’S FINALLY HAPPENING!! GET EXCITE!
And NOW, I’m gonna make you an offer you can’t refuse…
I don’t want to hear any objections. You straight up have ZERO EXCUSE, homie.
Get in there, get active, help me keep building this amazing community.
Seriously, what are you still doing here? LOLZ.
Get in there and make some noise. Intro yourself.
Send this to 5 of your friends. NOW. Seriously. Pretty, please 🙂
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Whether it’s the first time, or if it’s just been a while, let’s connect and get to know each other (better) as humans.
If we haven’t connected yet, connect with me on LinkedIN. I post some super useful stuff there, as well :)
Put 30 minutes on my calendar to chat. No strings attached, whatsoever.
Let’s get to know each other (in many cases after not chatting for a long time) as humans, friends.
Of course, if there’s something I can help you with, just ask and I’ll do whatever I can to ask.
Don’t be a stranger, friend.