For years, I heard the same phrase in meetings, training sessions, conferences and corridor conversations. Owners, managers, receptionists, consultants and lecturers repeated it with such absolute conviction that no one seemed to think it needed questioning.
The customer is always right.
For a long time, I believed it too, and it seemed enough to understand the profession. After all, our job was to welcome people, interpret their needs and resolve the problems that inevitably arise when hundreds of different stories coexist under the same roof. If the aim was for the guest to leave satisfied, agreeing with them almost always seemed the shortest route. Over the years, I discovered that the problem with phrases repeated too often is not that they are false, but that they are rarely enough to explain reality.
One morning, the receptionist knocked on my office door with that mixture of caution and uncertainty that tends to appear when someone expects the manager to make a decision no one else wants to take responsibility for. A guest was disputing a telephone call charged to his account and insisted, with complete certainty, that he had never made it. At the time, outgoing calls were recorded by a call-accounting system connected to the hotel system and, as far as we knew, it had never failed. The situation seemed to present an obvious choice: believe the system or believe the guest. Yet as I listened, I had the impression that we were answering the wrong question.
Before saying a word, I asked how much the call had cost.
There was a brief silence. Everyone was probably expecting an immediate decision, and my question seemed, at least at that moment, entirely secondary. To me, however, it was the only piece of information capable of revealing what we were really discussing.
If the amount had been insignificant, the argument would have cost far more than the call itself. No sensible company puts a guest’s trust at risk over a discrepancy whose financial value is irrelevant compared with the relationship it is trying to build. If, on the other hand, the charge had represented a significant amount and there were objective reasons to trust the system, the situation changed completely. It was no longer about resolving a disagreement over a telephone call. It was about deciding by what judgement we would run the business.
As I waited for the answer, I thought that whatever decision I made, someone would end up feeling wronged: the guest, the receptionist or perhaps even me. With time, I came to understand that many management decisions begin precisely there, when you accept that there is no answer capable of satisfying everyone and that responsibility lies precisely in accepting that cost.
I learned nothing about telephones that morning. What I learned was that managing is not about applying principles automatically, but about understanding what is truly at stake before deciding.
Many years later, I found myself facing a similar dilemma, although this time money had nothing to do with it.
By the time I reached the front desk, the argument was already over. The guest was still visibly upset. The staff member was trying to regain his composure while continuing to attend to the people waiting their turn, as so often happens in hotels, where even conflict has to coexist with routine. A few seconds looking around were enough to understand that everyone had witnessed what had happened. Some pretended to carry on working. Others avoided getting involved. The scene was over, but what truly mattered was still unresolved.
He was a regular guest. We had known him for years. He stayed with us frequently, and any strictly commercial analysis suggested that the sensible thing to do was to lower the tension, offer some form of apology and allow everything to carry on as before. But as I listened to what had happened, I realised that, for the first time, the question was no longer what it made sense to do about that guest. The real question was what everyone else would think when that conversation was over.
I remember hesitating for a moment. I thought about the possibility that he might feel offended, file a complaint or even decide never to return to the hotel. None of those consequences was insignificant. But there was another that concerned me far more and would never appear on a balance sheet. What would happen to the team’s trust if the organisation looked the other way whenever someone crossed the boundary of respect?
Over the years, I came to understand that organisations speak far less through what they say than through the decisions they make when circumstances make their stated principles uncomfortable. A member of staff may forget a meeting, a training session or an acknowledgement. What they are unlikely to forget is the day they discovered whether the company was genuinely prepared to stand behind them when they needed it most.
The conversation with that guest was calm. I explained that I was genuinely sorry about what had happened, but that I could not accept anyone treating a member of the team in that way. With the same respect with which I would have welcomed him on any other morning, I told him that I would rather lose him as a guest than turn that lack of respect into a commercial concession.
As I walked back to my office, I had the feeling that at some point during the argument, that person had ceased to occupy the role of guest and had simply become someone who had chosen to treat another person without dignity. I understood then that no commercial relationship justified ignoring that distinction.
I never saw that decision as an act of authority. I always understood it as a responsibility inherent in the position I held. With time, I realised that it had a far deeper effect on the team than any talk about leadership I could ever have given. No one said much about the incident and perhaps that was precisely why I understood that nothing needed to be said. Some decisions do not need to be explained; they only need to be seen.
Years passed before I understood that those two stories were really about the same thing. The first had taught me that commercial judgement does not mean winning every argument. The second showed me that it does not mean keeping every guest either. Together, they eventually revealed that managing was never about discovering who was right, but about deciding what I was prepared to lose in order not to lose what I considered non-negotiable. At the time, I thought I was protecting the identity of the organisation. Years later, I understood that I was protecting my own as well.
Even today, when I hear someone repeat that the customer is always right, I no longer feel the need to argue with the phrase. I simply return to that front desk a few minutes after everything was over. The guest had already left. The queue had begun moving again. Little by little, the front desk returned to its usual rhythm. The staff member took a deep breath, straightened a few papers on the counter and welcomed the next guest with the same warmth as always.
The difference would have been almost imperceptible to anyone walking into the hotel at that moment.
Not to me.
In that quiet gesture, I understood that some decisions do not improve the experience of the person who leaves. They quietly improve the experience of those who walk through the staff entrance every morning, knowing they are not alone.