Whose side are you on?
TL;DR: A customer left a one-star rating and a complaint about the service that she had received from the Stickies Bar staff during her visit. The CEO was not happy about it.
In most situations, we would see the company apologising on behalf of their staff. However, Stickies seemingly didn’t buy into the idea that the “customers are always right” but rather gave her a piece of their mind and decided to call her out in order to protect their staff’s actions.
The person in charge of the bar’s facebook account has been identified as Norman Then, the CEO of Stickies.
Unreasonable Customer Or Rude CEO?
This entire saga led to two differing views – those who felt that the bar’s response was justified as the customer had crossed the line and on the other hand, there were those who felt that it was rude, uncalled for and labelled it as poor PR.
On their Facebook post, customers applauded the way Norman defended his staff and patrons who are regulars also commended the staff for their quality service.
However, there were others who called them out for poorly handling the situation and for reacting disproportionately to the situation.
Not The End Of The Saga
Norman sent Fawn a personal message on Facebook after the spat to nail his take on the issue on the coffin.
Rather than addressing the issue at hand which is the service that she experienced, he took it to a more personal level to harshly criticise her.
He has since then apologised for his outburst in his response to the customer but sticks (pun intended) by his decision to defend his staff.
Is The Customer Really Always Right?
We think not. While good customer service should not be compromised, there are definitely instances where businesses will encounter self-entitled customers that leave a bad taste in your staffs’ mouths.
In fact, Huffington Post has pointed out 5 reasons why the customer is always right is a fallacy.
Firstly, it highlights the importance of trusting your staff over “unruly customers” because it is important to value your employees.
Secondly, the slogan “The customer is always right” alone could give unreasonable customers an unjustified advantage in the situation, simply because they are supposedly right by definition.
Thirdly, the Huffington acknowledges that some customers are indeed bad customers that are bad for the company.
Fourth, by putting customers before your employees, it would lead to worse customer service. This is due to various reasons such as unhappiness from being disvalued, and that they don’t deserve respect from customers.
Fifth, simple – some customers are plain wrong.
Moving Forward From This
However, acknowledging the fact that it may indeed be the customer’s fault in this case, Stickies might want to rethink their PR strategy when it comes to handling such situations in future.
Even if the customer is wrong, there are many ways to handle the situation amicably or give a response that could leave others applauding their tactfulness.
If anything, Stickies employees should rejoice that their management will jump in front of what they claim to be an unreasonable customer to defend them.
