Mahatma Gandhi on customer service

I saw this on a poster at my local purveyor of Indian goods and had to check out its veracity:

“A customer is the most important visitor on our premises. he is not dependent on us. We are dependent on him. He is not an interruption in our work. He is the purpose of it. He is not an outsider in our business. He is part of it. We are not doing him a favor by serving him. He is doing us a favor by giving us an opportunity to do so.”

The quote is attributed to Mahatma Gandhi. Ludicrous. Or is it? A search turns up both corroboration and skepticism. My money is with the denier who reports the quote actually came from Zig Ziglar, who says Gandhi said it.

Gotta love the internets.

UPDATE: the reference to Zig Zigler is oddly gone from the skeptic link above, replaced by one attributing the quote to L.L. Bean. Also, several people have mentioned that the quote universally ascribed to a speech Gandhi made in South Africa in 1890, but he didn’t actually arrive in South Africa in 1893.