The Customer is NOT Always Right ~ Here's Why
Mother's Day is behind us, business was great — and yet the calls Lori spent hours fielding afterward all had the same theme: the customers who did complain were meaner than ever. Not "something was wrong with my order" complaints, but flat-out rude ones. So this week Vonda and Lori take aim at the phrase that trained generations of shop owners to absorb the abuse: "the customer is always right." Their conclusion, backed by research and hard retail experience — it's simply not true, and clinging to it can cost you something far more valuable than one sale.
Where the phrase came from — and how it got twisted
The line was coined in 1909 by Harry Gordon Selfridge, founder of a London department store, as employee training: don't argue with customers. It started in good faith. But over a century it has evolved into a weapon customers use against employees. And a retail flower shop isn't a department store or a Nordstrom — a local business can't afford to keep remaking arrangements every time someone calls eight days later to say "some of it died."
The pantyhose problem
Vonda tells the story of Ron Keith, a pharmacist friend from Dixon, Illinois. As a trainee, he watched a woman demand a refund on pantyhose she claimed had a run when she bought them — a brand the store didn't even carry. The owner replaced them anyway, because "the customer is always right." Today's version is the customer who never changed the water, never trimmed the stems, set the vase in direct heat, and calls on day eight demanding fresh flowers. As Lori puts it: news flash — flowers die. That's how God made them, and it isn't the florist's fault.
What "always right" really costs you
The hosts walk through the real damage of a give-them-whatever-they-want policy. First, it enables the chronic complainer — replacing the arrangement is rewarded behavior, so they'll do it again. Second, and more expensive, it tells your employee "I'm going to override you." Employees who feel unsupported get frustrated, and unsupported employees leave — remember, people leave bosses, not companies. In a year when finding flower shop help is this hard, you cannot afford to lose a good team member over a customer you'll never please. There's a ripple effect too: drained employees deliver worse service to the next five customers in line.
Their favorite proof is the Southwest Airlines story: a frequent flyer complained about everything — no peanuts on short flights, no preferred seating — until customer service forwarded her latest long email to the CEO. His reply was short: I'm sorry you feel this way, we will miss you very much, good luck. Imagine how supported those employees felt.
How to fire a customer (kindly)
Vonda did it in her own shop: a couple of recipients generated a complaint every single time, so eventually the answer became "we're sorry, we no longer accept orders for that address — here's our competitor's number." Worried about the bad review? Let them write it, then respond truthfully and professionally: "Every time you've ordered from us, you've been unhappy; we think it's in both our interests that you go elsewhere." Lori notes that when she books vacation rentals, she cares far more about how an owner responds to a negative review than about the review itself — and readers of your reviews will see through a chronic complainer too.
One more scenario worth stealing: a shop got an angry call about undelivered Mother's Day flowers — ordered through 1-800-Flowers, which had falsely listed the shop as the fulfilling florist even though the shop belongs to no wire service. The right move isn't to eat the order to keep the peace; it's to kindly explain what happened, help the customer backtrack, and become the hero without paying for someone else's misrepresentation.
Key takeaways
- Get the facts first — and listen to your employee's side — before you respond to any complaint.
- The customer is not always right; sometimes they're just wrong, and replacing product anyway rewards the behavior.
- Don't be afraid to say no or to send a chronic complainer to your competitor: "we can't seem to make you happy, so let's call it a truce."
- Respond to negative reviews with short, factual, professional replies — future customers judge the response more than the review.
- When you weigh a repeat-offender customer against an employee you need every day, back the employee. People leave bosses, not companies.