When the Customer Is Wrong (Client Centric Part 6)

I’m a 65-year-old casual rider with a wonderful new mountain bike. A flat tire the first time out with the new bike showed me how tough it is to mess with a carefully aligned piece of machinery. I had heard that tubeless tires are the way to go for mountain bikers, so I stopped in at the bike shop and told them that is what I wanted. A day later, both tires were tubeless.

Two weeks later, I returned from an out-of-town trip to find two flat tires. A second trip to the bike shop revealed that I was supposed to ride the bike for at least an hour the day after I took it home in order to seal the tires. I did that the next day, but when I went to use the bike two weeks later, I discovered both tires were flat again.

When I delivered my flat-tired bike to the cycle shop for a third time, they explained that with tubeless tires I would need to come in every couple of months for a refresh. I finally had the whole story. I asked them to please put normal thorn-proof tubes on so I could go home and not have to return for a year or more.

The bicycle shop could have saved me a lot of headaches if they had asked a few questions and pointed me in the right direction the first time I was there. The customer is not always right. The customer always wants to succeed and achieve their end goals. The customer-centric vendor protects the customer from poor choices and moves them to success. It is as simple as that.