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Customers Are Always Right—Or Are They?

Posted on by Robin Del Mundo

The business world had first heard the maxim, “The customer is always right,” when Harry Gordon Selfridge, the founder of the Selfridge department store in London, used it to reassure customers that they can always expect good service from his company. More than a century later, it’s still being applied by many business giants, often to the exasperation of employees.
Decade after decade, this mentality has been drilled into the heads of entrepreneurs. Workers are told to look beyond the need to do what is just. They’re expected to turn the other cheek and smile when an irate customer is calling them down. Well, here’s a secret for you that everyone knows but nobody wants to spill out: The customer isn’t always right. You know it, and business owners know it, too.

Why ‘The Customer Is Always Right’ Mentality Is Wrong

Why This Mentality Should Be Ditched

Businessmen have long touted the customer-is-always-right mentality. However, it’s time to let it go and accept that it could destroy employees’ morale, mess up the business process, and harm customer service in general. Customers are not always right—they just think they are. However, that doesn’t mean you should continue to apply this principle mindlessly in your business. Here are six reasons why this mentality should’ve been flushed down the drain a long, long time ago.

1. Customers don’t always know what they’re doing

Customers are not experts. They may be aggressive in asserting their opinions, but most of the time, they don’t really know how their words and actions affect the bigger picture. To contend the absolute power of customers, regardless of their individual attitudes and unique situations, is one way to send good business flying out the door.
If you know that the client is wrong and your employee is right, don’t suck up to the former and disown the latter. Instead, be just and reasonable. Remember that part of your job is to help both customers and employees. Telling customers they’re right when they’re not doesn’t do them—or you—any favor. Don’t bend over backwards every time a client complains. Remember, you’re the expert, not them.

Why ‘The Customer Is Always Right’ Mentality Is Wrong

2. Most customers are resistant to change

The case is simple—there are many consumers out there who are simply not progressive thinkers. They care more about keeping the status quo as it is than exploring possibilities for improvement. They don’t care if you’re trying to create something new; they’re not going to adopt it until the rest of the world is onboard and they’re the only ones left in oblivion. The fact that there are still many retrogressive people in the world can put you in a vulnerable spot, especially if your business is geared towards innovation. As you know, the enemy of business success is stagnation, so it will harm you to stay on one spot for the longest time just to please regressive customers.

3. Unreasonable customers are bad for business

Most entrepreneurs are possessed by the illusion that the more clients a business has, the better off it will be. While this may be justified to some extent, it’s not an absolute truth that every businessperson should uphold. There are things more important than garnering a massive consumer base and earning money—and yes, we’re talking about dignity and respect. That said, it’s only appropriate to fire a bad customer who is on the verge of burning all of your resources and energy. Remember, you can only expend so much, so don’t use up all your resources on clients who deserve them the least. Dedicate them instead on reasonable clients who are willing to work things out. Do your part, and if that doesn’t lead you anywhere, move on. After all, no reward can make keeping a difficult customer relationship worthwhile.
To use author Peter Fader’s words, “Not all customers deserve your company’s best efforts. And despite what the old adage says, the customer is most definitely not always right. Because in the world of customer centricity, there are good customers…and then there is everybody else.”

Why ‘The Customer Is Always Right’ Mentality Is Wrong

4. It gives bad customers an unfair advantage

Since when does being rude gets rewarded? Abusive customers need to know that they can’t always get what they want. Sometimes, they need to adjust their mindset. What makes more sense is for nice people to be treated with care and respect. Businesses should run the extra mile for those who leave a long-lasting positive impact, not for those who only bring problems.

5. It makes employees unhappy and resentful

The customer-is-always-right principle is a double-edged sword. Not only does it encourage rudeness; it also dampens employee morale. By choosing a hard-to-please client (who is halfway through the door anyway) over a valuable employee who’s been with you through tough times, you’re only reinforcing the prejudice regarding employers not having the employees’ back—and this will upset your employees. To quote Bret Larsen, CEO of eVisit, “Chances are, you assembled your team based on their values and abilities. Put faith in that. Support them however you can.”

6. It results into worse customer service overall

If your argument for insisting that the customer is always right is that it’s a good customer service principle, then you need to reevaluate your business assumptions. To borrow words from author Alexander Kjerulf, “Believing the customer is always right is a subconscious way of favoring the customer over the employee, which can lead to resentment among employees. When managers put the employees first, the employees will then put the customers first. Put employees first and they will be happy at work.” When employees are happy, they feel more motivated. This ultimately leads to a more positive environment where customer service can thrive best.
The gist is simple—customers are not always right. However, that doesn’t mean they’re always wrong either. You have to weigh in the facts and use your judgment fairly. That’s what being a good entrepreneur and employer is about, anyway.
 

Resources:

Beal, Andy. “Why the Customer Is Not Always Right and Why It Doesn’t Matter.” American Express. July 25, 2011. www.americanexpress.com/us/small-business/openforum/articles/why-the-customer-is-not-always-right-and-why-it-doesnt-matter
DeMers, Jayson. “No, The Customer Is Not Always Right.” Forbes. September 2, 2014. www.forbes.com/sites/jaysondemers/2014/09/02/no-the-customer-is-not-always-right/#74b964ad4412
Kjerulf, Alexander. “Top 5 Reasons Why ‘The Customer Is Always Right’ Is Wrong.” Huffington Post. April 15, 2014. www.huffingtonpost.com/alexander-kjerulf/top-5-reasons-customer-service_b_5145636.html
Page, Bubba. “3 Reasons Why the Customer Is Always Right…Is Wrong.” Inc. October 15, 2015. www.inc.com/bubba-page/3-reasons-why-the-customer-is-always-right-is-wrong.html
“The Customer Is Always Right.” Phrases. n.d. www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/106700.html

Why It Matters to Have a Quality Healthcare PowerPoint

Posted on by Rick E

As the healthcare industry continues to grow, more and more medical professionals are relying on PowerPoint presentations for various purposes. Healthcare PowerPoint presentations are used to train residents and students, inform the market, or pitch to investors. The problem, however, is that many presentations lack the professional edge to inspire, motivate, or convince effectively.

If you’re satisfied with an underwhelming presentation, be warned that it can do more harm than good – especially to your professional image.

Boosts the Learning Process

As with any training materials, the design of your PowerPoint presentation must be appealing enough to motivate the participants to listen and learn. Moreover, your slides should make it easy for your audience to absorb information easily. Otherwise, they’d end up experiencing information overload.

When you create your presentation, it’s important that you consider those factors. If you’re having trouble converting your training topics into an engaging PowerPoint, you may want to ask the help of professional PowerPoint designers.

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The learning process is improved when you focus your audience’s attention on important parts of the presentation. With a professionally designed presentation, you’ll get slides that are free from unnecessary details, such as inappropriate background sounds, fancy animations, or slide transitions, etc.

Simplifies Information

Medical and healthcare professionals tend to use industry-related jargon and data when communicating with each other. This can be unfavorable, however, when presenting new products to the market. Presentations with too many technical terms can alienate the audience and thus, fail to achieve results. One effective work around that professionals do is to use minimal text and employ graphics.

healthcare powerpoint 2

Graphs and charts are useful as well.

healthcare powerpoint 4

The whole idea is to make all information simple enough to be understood by the client.

Grabs Attention

Whether you’re pitching to fellow medical professionals or people outside your industry, your healthcare PowerPoint presentation should be engaging enough without relying on too many bells and whistles. Colors, animations, and background sounds can be helpful, but they should be used with great care. Otherwise, they will distract your audience or worse, annoy them.

Colors, animations, and background sounds can be helpful, but they should be used with great care. Otherwise, they will distract your audience or worse, annoy them.

You should also remember that quality healthcare PowerPoint presentations generate a “wow” reaction as early as the first slide.

With a well-designed first slide, the audience members will just sit back, relax and say “Tell me more,” as you begin your introduction – instead of being compelled to impatiently blurt out, “Next slide, please.”

healthcare powerpoint

 

Conclusion

Designing PowerPoint presentation for any industry comes with challenges. The key is to know enough about your subject and plan your every step.

There are lots of resources available online to help you out should you hit a snag. Or better yet, get the assistance of professional PowerPoint designers. You can always count on them to create well-designed, high-quality PowerPoint healthcare presentations.

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References

Berman, Jillian. “Health Care Industry Will Create 5.6 Million More Jobs By 2020: Study.” The Huffington Post. June 21, 2012. Accessed May 28, 2014.

Case Study: Creating Professional PowerPoint for Email Professionals

Posted on by Rick E

Email Professionals is an email marketing company.  Their services include developing winning email campaigns for clients by creating a unique email strategy, writing winning copy, and performing quality assurance on every email. Part of their strategy is to track results in order to know how to improve their campaign, if necessary.

What they essentially do is match their email marketing services according to their client’s situation. As every client has different needs, they propose different strategies. Incidentally, when we were tasked to create a PowerPoint presentation for their company, it was the same thing that we had in mind. Well, because naturally, that’s our principle as well.

We at SlideGenius strive to meet our clients’ expectations by creating presentations that are tailored exactly to their needs. We don’t just create slide decks from ready-made templates. Our goal is to create unique presentations, whether we are building from an existing one or creating from scratch.

The Challenge

Our task is to create a PowerPoint presentation that highlights the benefits of doing business with Email Professionals and at the same time, encourage an emotional response from the target audience. The audience members, by the way, are most likely other business entities. So the “challenge” that we have here is to make the slides look professional yet keep them from looking dull and boring. Since we’re going to talk about emails, we don’t want to simply spam the audience, so to speak.

The Solution

Even with our years of experience creating unique PowerPoint presentations, our team handled this project with utmost care. We don’t want to rest on our laurels. We just want to do an excellent job. With that in mind, we started by looking into the qualities of Email Professionals, what makes them unique and then put those thing front and center..

SlideGenius-Email-Professionals-2SlideGenius-Email-Professionals-4

 

Basically, we made sure that the colors and font styling were consistent in order for the slides to convey a level of professionalism. We also managed to make the entire presentation interesting by adding snappy, copy. In the end, we were able to achieve what we had set out to do. To give the slides a professional look and feel without making it too dull and boring.

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