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I accuse customers of bearing some of the responsibility for the deterioration in customer relations? We often deplore the lack of customer concern among our teams, especially those in direct contact with customers. We are constantly looking for ways to increase customer awareness and thus optimize the customer experience. Despite our best efforts, some people become discouraged because of the customers themselves. Aren’t there too many rude, disrespectful, dishonest, stressed-out, condescending and ungrateful customers nowadays? It’s so hard to smile at someone who thinks they can do whatever they want “because they’re paying”. Customers pay for a product or service. Sympathy, smiles and understanding of others are non-contractual postures, and there is no customer-supplier relationship based on these aspects. So I accuse rude customers of being co-responsible for our companies’ shortcomings in terms of customer experience. Some would say that our annoyance is the result of organizations’ lack of customer awareness, so it would be the companies that “started it all”. Certainly, some organizations deserve our annoyance… but probably not the people who work for them. This doesn’t alter my conviction that companies have a lot of work to do in terms of customer culture, but please, all of us, the customers that we are, let’s help them too by being good customers! Let’s encourage employees who make an effort, let’s say thank you, let’s leave a tip to show we’ve appreciated a service, let’s kindly reply to an e-mail that provides us with a solution, let’s smile, let’s stop pretending we have the power because we’re paying.