The customer is always right, says the old long adage. But is she also in charge? This question may provoke long debate by professionals and the novice as well. This is because it is a known fact that customers’ are very important to the survival and existence of any business, be it product oriented or service oriented. But if customer is always right, does it mean she is also in charge? The customer is therefore also a royal pain. One of the trickier problems executives face is that this indispensible kvetch has poked her nose into places where she once did not belong. The customer is no longer sitting patiently in the dining room waiting to consume what you’ve prepared; she’s in your kitchen, kibitzing. As Frances Frei of Harvard Business School puts it in an article called Breaking the Trade-Off Between Efficiency and Service: What if a manufacturer had to deal with customers waltzing around its shop floor? What if they showed up, intermittently and unannounced, and proceeded ...
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