Retail Store Manager Interview Question:

Tell me do you believe the customer is always right?

Submitted by: Muhammad

This is a more important question than most people would think when it comes to determining who's going to make a strong employee. Answers to this question will reveal how much someone understands about what happens on the floor. Anyone who answers just yes or just no hasn't really thought about the question and doesn't understand what it means to work on the retail floor.

Customers are wrong all of the time, quite frankly. I firmly believe it's not that the customer is always right, but rather the customer must think they're always right. A sales person's job is to always steer a customer in the right direction, while making the customer think it was their idea the whole time.

Let me give you a true example. I worked with a customer who insisted that she was two sizes smaller than she truly was. My job was to make sure she left the store in clothes that fit her, happy about her purchases and her body image. I had to use a combination of tricks, including bringing her looser-silhouette items and telling her our sizes just ran smaller than usual, but I managed to sell her five items of clothing that just about fit her. She turned into a repeat customer.

Had I believed that the customer is always right, I would have let her walk out of the store with clothes that didn't fit her (or without making a purchase), which she would have hated because they made her feel bad about her body. That would have translated into hatred of the brand.
Submitted by: Muhammad