As customers, we do not have a monopoly of reason, although we always have the authority to decide, to choose whether to approve and reject or evolve and promote, to return or leave, to recommend or not, to repeat or discard. I believe that the power of the customer is enormous, and because of this, we promote success with our preference, business and loyalty. However, I also think it is a limited power, since it is not enough to always be right.
Often, as a customer, we forget that people are smart. With some regularity we decree absolutes in the territory of the relative. The fact that we have the right of approval or rejection does not give us the right to be right. Authority is not truth, and so, as clients, we must listen to nature, listening twice as much and speaking half as much, focusing on getting the most out of each specialist as well as the greatest contribution from each expert. As a client, I am obliged to be concerned that what I do is business, looking for a fair relationship between what I pay and what I receive. If I am only looking for my own gain in a transaction, I am certainly not going to achieve a relationship.
I am a customer every day, and I serve customers on a daily basis. Internal customers and external customers, customers of all types, sizes and tastes. However, there is no better customer than one that inspires its people to give their best to each other, that listens, recognizes and embraces, that demands and summarizes, that compensates adequately, that squeezes but does not suffocate. When I give myself as a client and place my trust, I receive commitment and redoubled attention. When I am punctilious and distrustful, when I get involved in everything and push in every detail, even in those areas that are not my specialty or are of my total ignorance, I receive only what I give and not all that I could receive.
The client who forgets the talent of the people he hires loses, and the hired loses because he does not express his full potential. The client who understands that the only thing he has is the gigantic power of approval or rejection, but not the power of truth, wins.
As a customer on a daily basis, I have to say it clearly, even at the risk of being repetitive: the customer is not always right.
