Is the Customer Always Right?: What Decades in a Small Service Business Taught Me About Customers, Boundaries, and Staying Sane

Have you ever wondered what a service professional says after pulling away from your property?After decades of running a small service business, Casey Johnson has encountered nearly every kind of customer: the amateur supervisor, the repeat caller, the online expert, the last-minute canceller, the reluctant payer, and the person whose "quick question" somehow becomes another half hour of unpaid work.Is the Customer Always Right? offers a funny, candid look at what happens behind the scenes when customers and service businesses interact. It explains why a five-minute job does not have a five-minute price, why "since you're already here" is rarely as simple as it sounds, and why the friendly family dog may have a very different opinion of the technician entering its yard.This is not a book about attacking customers. Most customers are wonderful, and businesses could not survive without them. It is an invitation to see the other side of the appointment-the schedules, employees, expenses, safety concerns, misunderstandings, and occasional absurdities that customers may never realize exist.With humor, real-world experience, and practical suggestions for working together, this book gives customers a view from behind the service counter while reminding business owners that they are not alone.Whether you hire service professionals, manage employees, or run a small business yourself, you will probably recognize someone in these pages.Hopefully, it isn't you.