Is the customer always right?

LexBlog has a ten step process we run through in taking a legal professional’s blog live. The process revolves around strategy, design, education, editing, quality and assurance, and marketing.

If a blog isn’t up to snuff, LexBlog has a team of young tigers in client service, project management, client development, and editorial who will fight a client tooth and nail who wants us to take a ‘sub-standard’ blog live.

The team’s logic is if we give in to a client’s demands once, we’ll start giving in all the time, and the quality of the LexBlog Blog Network, now numbering over 2,500 blog lawyer authors, will suffer. “We won’t stand for anything. Our blogs will look as bad as the other blogs out there.”

This team backs up their argument with stories of lawyers and law firms coming back later and thanking the team for demanding quality. The clients found they were prouder of their blog and achieved greater client development success. Client development tells me they hear from new clients that they want to be on the LexBlog Network because of the quality of our legal blogs.

On the other hand, I’m from the old school. “Rule #1: The customer is always right. Rule #2: If the customer is ever wrong, re-read rule #1.” I’m not looking to get my clients angry, lose them, and lose the referrals they make. Plus LexBlog has a 100% client satisfaction guarantee we put in writing.

At yesterday afternoon’s LexBlog team get together we got into a heated argument (I mean knock down vicious) over this conflict of ‘LexBlog Standards’ versus the customer is always right. The more I argued we have to do what the customer wanted, the more I got kicked in the teeth.

Reading Seth Godin’s recent blog post, Win the fight, lose the customer, I thought I had pretty good answer for those tigers come Monday morning.

Does it really matter if you’re right?

Given the choice between acknowledging that your customer is upset or proving to her that she is wrong, which will you choose?

You can be right or you can have empathy.

You can’t do both.

It’s not the nature of capitalism to need to teach people a lesson, it’s the nature of being a human, we just blame it on capitalism. In fact, smart marketers understand that the word ‘right’ in “The customer is always right” doesn’t mean that they’d win in court or a debate. It means, “If you want the customer to remain a customer, you need to permit him to believe he’s right.”

If someone thinks they’re unhappy, then you know what? They are.

I’d suggest that they try, as Seth advises, saying this to yourself the next time they’re telling an upset client they can’t take the their blog live:

I have no problem acknowledging that you’re unhappy, upset or even angry. Next time, I’d prefer to organize our interaction so you don’t end up feeling that way, and I probably could have done it this time, too. You have my attention and my empathy and I value you. Thanks for being here.

Because as Seth explains if you can’t be happy with that, “Go ahead and fire the customer, cause they’re going to leave anyway.”

But as sure as I was in the middle of Friday afternoon’s fight that I would prevail, and then again reading Seth’s post, I’m not so sure I’ll win the argument anymore. And I’m not sure I want to.

Look at who’s fighting me. Young professionals I hired because they were smarter than me, had strong principals and morals, were passionate about life, believed in my cause, and demonstrated a high degree of care in everything they did.

I wanted a team who could really teach legal professionals how to network through the Internet, who would make a difference in the professional and personal lives of the lawyers we serve, and who were capable of being part of a cause which could improve the image of our legal profession.

Looks like I got such a team. Do I want to fight them? Do I want to win?

Understand, we don’t fight with our clients often. It’s dam rare. And I’m sure we’ll work something out so we can give our clients what they need while maintaining LexBlog’s standards.

But when you’re building a quality blog network of legal professionals, maybe there are times when the customer isn’t right.

What do you guys think? Feel free Team LexBlog to continue your input here.