Is the customer always right? Hardly.

'The customer is always right' is wrong. To show how, let’s take a look at cricket.

Before the season starts, players join the discussion about the rules: For how long do we want the match? What if it rains? What is fair play? They eventually reach an agreement and can start the season.

But once they are on the field, they cease being rational and become emotional. They argue, demand exemptions, justify their behaviour, and cheat if they can.

Once they become the player, the more they differ from the rules at the start, the further they us further from delivering what they wanted in the first place: A fair and pleasant game.

The cost of shirt returns

I recently read in Dan Ariely’s book Predictably Irrational that shoppers who buy a shirt, wear it with the tags still on, then return it days later cost retailers (in 2004) $16 billion per year; 30 times the amount spent in preventing more serious crime.

Now the store needs to raise the price to cover the theft, which betrays the store owner’s ability to provide the service that the customer asked for.

In allowing a shirt-returning player under the guise of ‘The customer is always right,’ we forget about the customer who is actually right – the one who wanted good clothes at a decent price.

In presuming that the player is right, we betray the customer.

Finding customer experience solutions

Policy that is too harsh will be an unpleasant customer experience. We still need to take their word to some degree that there was something genuinely wrong with the shirt.

But to what degree. Too much trust is unfair on all the honest customers.

Perhaps a post-hoc investigation, where happy customers are rewarded, as are honest claims - they deserve a fair price for not raising it with illegitimate returns, but dishonest claims made in bad faith do not attract the same rewards.

Just like a cricket season: Make a better game for fair players. Do not impose the cost of bad play upon the fair players.