Because we are all ‘people’ these days, we too easily forget that they are customers and we are there to serve them. I think a lot of confusion has arisen from the way customer relationships are much more informal than in the past. Just because customers don't expect the kind of subservience and obsequiousness that characterised the old days, we in the service industries mustn't forget that we are still here to serve.
We should be friendly to customers but that doesn't make them our friends. We should be interested in the customer but the customer doesn't have to be interested in us. We have to listen to them, they don't have to listen to us.
Because these days the social skills we use in the service industry mimic those we use in our personal relationships, it is more difficult to remember that we are actually meant to be working.
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