Frozen In Time 及时行乐

The customer is not always right, neither is the boss

As I found out today, "the customer is always right" does not hold true. It didn't feel good to know that my fellow colleagues had to be part of this unpleasant experience which I managed to avoid. And I was lucky enough to be away from my phone at the right time such that I managed to avoid unnecessary screaming in my ears. Otherwise, I would have felt so wronged. Haha I guess my day was destined not to be ruined by ridiculous people and a ridiculous boss!

But in a way, it was a mistake on my part for not alerting my colleagues about the possibility of such a situation occuring. I guess I have overlooked the fact that people tend to have ulterior motives for their own benefit.

I also had this thought today, that employees cannot always provide good service to customers because they have to take orders from bosses who are not always right, or worse still, obviously never right but think they are always right! And because the bosses don't always deal directly with the customers, they don't understand the difficulty that employees face.

What is the best thing to do when the customer is right but the boss's decision is not right? I really don't know but here's what I did:

Call 1: I conveyed the boss's decision to the customer and after a while, realising that I was repeating the same thing and the conversation was going nowhere, I just chose to end the call.

Call 2:
"...Then your boss must be really inhumane."
"I would think so too."
The second time, the customer sounded less agitated and the call ended well.

What I did was defintely not the best thing but I hope it wasn't "so wrong" that the customer would head to the forum. I definitely agree that the customer was right and feel that we could and should have done more to appease them.

But what to do? I am only an employee.