As we all get to face customer service from one side of the counter or another, we might as well address a well-known motto of it and ask if ‘the customer is always right’. One might argue that this phrase is exaggerated and simplified as most rules are put in place in order to convey and encompass various aspects of good customer service such as taking your clients seriously and treating them with respect. For this reason, there might come a day when a service provider might recognize the value of not taking this rule too literally. That was the experience of this Redditor who decided to give the customer what he wants, only to make him realize that, in fact, even the customer himself did not want what he claimed he wanted.

More info: Reddit

A man gave a dissatisfied customer what he wanted and got him to change his mind immediately

Image credits: Kampus Production (not the actual image)

The customer requested they fire the employee who sent them the wrong item, so his employer pretended to do so

Image credits: u/hatespafacebook2022

Image credits: JESHOOTS (not the actual image)

Image credits: u/hatespafacebook2022

The man thanked the customer for insisting on taking action and noted that the employee was fired just before Christmas

Image credits: Karolina Grabowska (not the actual image)

The customer was shocked – he profusely apologized and literally begged to hire the employee back

The story captures perfectly how having a good sense of humor can not only save a person some nerve but also help to teach other people a lesson in being more self-aware and considerate of others.  Let’s maybe start by noticing where being considerate and empathetic has its place, as this man’s dissatisfied customer failed to consider, so he used it against him.

The fact is, we do expect to have good customer service as clients, which is natural, as we paid for it after all. However, dealing with people providing us with a service of some sort, we never know the other side or the back story of the person, and often we do not know the overall situation, which led to a specific outcome. 

This is not to say we shouldn’t expect people to be responsible for their actions, but simply to not be too quick to judge and to be reckless and merciless in our judgment. Let’s just say, to not blow the problem out of proportion by making it seem bigger than it actually is. It is our emotions that tend to be really good in doing that, like a child crying for candy he accidentally dropped on the ground.

This man had to address the concerns of the dissatisfied client, who received something other than what he ordered. However, as he soon happened to find out, the client’s expectations were far exceeded with the regular refund and urgent delivery of the correct item. As we know from the story, he wanted no less than to get “Steve” fired to compensate for the inconvenience.

His employer, of course, was not even considering such an option of firing a good employee, who also happened to be an honest and caring person. But as this customer took it a bit too far with his request, the manager also answered by creating a somewhat over-the-top backstory for “Steve”, which as far as this customer knows could have been true though.

Image credits: Fox (not the actual image)

That is, the customer was making his judgment based on the assumption he knows enough about the person and the situation to ask for getting him fired. And the employer used it by thanking the customer for his sound judgment and stating that it added to “Steve” his employee of 4 years, who happened to be the only source of income for his 2 kids and disabled wife, being fired 2 weeks before Christmas and breaking into tears over such a dissolution. 

Obviously, such an email did not take long to make the customer reconsider his sound judgment, as he sent a long email, profusely apologizing and literally begging the manager to hire the employee back. As the OP put it, he found an excellent way to give the customer what they wanted only to make them realize it is far from what they want after all.

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In their study: “Why do customers switch?”, B. Mittal and W. Lassar study the dynamics of customer satisfaction versus loyalty, questioning a well-spread assumption about customer satisfaction alone being sufficient to guarantee customer loyalty. They found that half of the “satisfied” customers were likely to switch their service provider. They made a distinction between satisfaction as driven more by the quality of work performed and the way the service was delivered. They noted that both factors were crucial when trying to achieve the loyalty of a client. 

The second aspect includes and emphasizes communication which can go a long way, as the man of the story realized and actually used for his purposes, not limiting himself to only a technical role of his position. It is hard to tell whether this specific client would be likely to stay loyal to this company, it might depend highly on what this man answered to the letter of apology from the customer. However, from the customer service point, he seemed to notice that customer loyalty has to do a lot with emotional connection as well, which his customer definitely developed via their email communication.

Redditors noted the world would be a much better place if people took a second to step back and see how their action might affect others

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