‘The Customer is King’… Dissecting the statement.
A few years ago, myself and a colleague went to a Supplier forum which had speakers from various industries unloading knowledge and wisdom to us in the viewing gantry. All was well and good, until it got to the main event, titled ‘The Customer is King’. This speech went on about the importance of placing customers on the highest pedestal, ignoring all misdemeanours and errors, abolishing all wrongdoings for the greater good of the business.
Every paragraph of this speech was suffixed with ‘and again…the Customer is King’.
This age old saying of ‘The Customer is King’ really used to grind my gears, and from the looks of it, not just me. When it was opened to questions at the end of the speech, multiple grumbles were heard from across the audience and a wave of hands reached to the sky. Each and every question was about ‘But what if the customer did x’y’z’ and ‘But what if this was wrong?’, to which the speakers constant reply was ‘It doesn’t matter, the customer is always king’.
Safe to say the room did not approve, and I feel the speaker got a lot more than he bargained for.
In my humble opinion, I feel he only got it 50% correct.
The Customer are not King…. Relationships are king.
Don’t get me wrong, we live in the real world, we can all have frustrating moments, as I’m sure here we may frustrate some of our suppliers from time to time, but the crucial thing to remember is that we’re all striving after the same goal, to be as successful as possible going down the path of least resistance. Things may change the distort the direction of this path, but that’s the ideal scenario.
We are extremely proud to have an extremely good working relationships with all our customers. We are very forthcoming, open and honest with all our customers, positive or negative. Reinforcement of correct decisions come from positive feedback and improvements of wanting systems and procedures come from constructive criticism. We even have an exchange programme set up with one of our customers to impart our knowledge to them and their knowledge to us, giving a better understanding all around of what we can offer them with the right information and what they require from us.
The afterthought of all this seems like a very positive one. The reason I think we really didn’t resonate with the speaker at the supplier forum was because we don’t tend to have issues with many customers, or suppliers for that matter. Being open and frank from the outset seems to build a stable grounding of foundation for a relationship to flourish.
There is no need for the Customer to always be King, when both the Customer and yourselves can be the Emperors together with an open, thriving relationship built on communication.
We are a customer to, I’m sure they complain too.
Customers are not king, relationships are.