The Customer Isn’t Always Right

The University of B.C. has been doing research of how customers judge the quality of service they receive.

“The study, which will be published in the Academy of Management Journal, asked participants to watch videos that showed interaction between a book store customer and a sales clerk that was either a white male, black male or a white female. Although all clerks performed similarly, the white male clerk’s rating was 19 per cent higher.”

This is particularly scary considering the current state of our economy. Employers trying to make tough decisions about who to lay off will undoubtedly take this sort of misleading customer feedback into consideration.