“The customer is always right” is one of the most persistent fallacies you will hear in service-oriented businesses. I don’t mean to suggest that the customer is always wrong, far from it. But when they are, you shouldn’t be afraid to call them on it. Let me give you a recent example.

I was having lunch at my favourite fast-food joint in Putney, the Knockout Burger in Roslyn Park, enjoying an excellent chicken Satay burger with some salt fries on the side when my phone started bleeping. I have to tell you: there are very few things I hate more than work interrupting my gastronomical forrays. But the phone kept bleeping, so my professional ethics kicked in, and I answered.

It was my man, Charlie, or Charles Williams, as he likes to be called. Charles is one of my most experienced tenancy cleaning crew leaders and a go-getter. If he needed professional advice or help, the case was anything but ordinary.

“Sorry to disturb you, boss, but we seem to have a problem. Our customer at Bramcote Road has made a complete mess of his quote request and insists on getting the service at the price he received. We simply cannot do it.”

It wasn’t the first time we ran into such a conundrum – a customer trying to take advantage of us, pretending to be a noob. I quickly ran through our online quote system and opened the address in question. It was a beautiful, two-floor brick house in the heart of Putney, rented from a well-respected local estate agency. Our customer had booked what we called “skeleton tenancy cleaning” – the bare minimum service package, excluding steam carpet washing and exterior window cleaning. If I were a betting man, I would say the customer needed one or both of these services.

I didn’t want to put Charles in the position of dealing with a bad customer – that was my job. Besides, I was less than a mile away from Bramcote Rd, so I had no excuse. I quickly finished my burger and the fries, jumped into the car and headed for what promised to be an unpleasant encounter.

When I arrived at the address, I found the last thing I wanted to see – two of my cleaners smoking next to our minivan and Charles furiously talking on the phone. The customer – a suave-looking gentleman in his early forties – was also in a bad mood.

“Connor Craft, pleased to meet you!” I greeted him as I extended my hand. He didn’t take it – not a good start and an instant cooldown on my part. I don’t appreciate rudeness, regardless of the situation.

“Your people have been very unhelpful and are arguing about trifles! We could have finished this by now so I could do some other stuff!”

“Let’s see what we can do about it”, I said in a peace-offering tone as I headed for the front door. When I walked into the house, I needed five seconds to know that Charles had been right (not that I ever questioned it.) The long hallway floor was covered with a carpet which might have been red during its best days. Its state was horrendous – there were large patches of dust smothering and yellowish pet hair, most probably from a large dog. The house itself was in a relatively decent shape cleaning-wise, but the carpets were a total mess.

“Here is the problem, sir”, I began, turning to my irritated customer. “You have booked a regular end of tenancy cleaning package that does not include specialised carpet cleaning. We provide the service at a very competitive price, but you should have booked it beforehand. We cannot effectively do the job you require.”

The man looked at me incredulously. “But I checked your task sheet, and it says vacuuming the carpets is included in the price. So what’s the problem?”

“We can vacuum the carpets, yes. But with all due respect, it will achieve nothing. Do you see those patches close to the front door? They are the signs of deep dust smothering that we can only treat with hot water extraction. Don’t get me wrong – we can take the job, clean your house well, and vacuum the carpets. But when your estate agent arrives, he will point to the carpet and ask why it looks like this. It is grounds enough to deny your security deposit back.”

I could see that my arguments were not making even the slightest inroads. But I realised the customer was not trying to shortchange us – he genuinely didn’t understand the nature of the problem and expected vacuum cleaning to do the trick. After another couple of minutes of back and forth, he stated that he was willing to take the risk. I shrugged my shoulders and gave my crew the green light.

A few days later, I received a phone call from the estate agency that managed the house. “Connor, I really hate to bother you about it, but we had a problem with one of our tenants. He mentioned booking you for the move-out cleaning, and I was confident we would have no issue with the final check-up. What’s up with the carpets, though?”

I told the agent the very same story I am retelling you now, and he sighed in disbelief. “They would never learn, would they…” The funny thing was that the tenant did lose his security deposit, and the estate agency booked us for the requisite hot water extraction job.