You know the one. She or he is a paying customer. You need their business, but you don’t necessarily want it anymore. They ask more questions, question your answers, challenge policy and/or procedure, threaten their account or business and in some cases, harrass your staff.
When do you say good-bye?
My opinion is; unless the customer has blatantly abused someone, Never ever ever.
The scenario du jour:
Special order and handling was required, which meant a little research on my part. When I was making a call for our Special Customer (profile above), one of my team members took notice of the research I was involved in, heard my questions – and even some aggresive negotiating tactics on behalf of our customer.
He asked me, “How can you still be trying so hard for this guy? He’s not very nice!” The answer was so clear to me, that I thought I should start sending money to the XCS founder, because clearly something is catching on. What I mean to say is, “there was a time when… “
This person is OUR customer, a fee paying bank customer.
We have to be careful to exude the same level of enthusiasm in our work for the engaging, warm and pleasant people who buy our products and use our services as we do for those who can tend to drain us. They should be viewed as the same, even when this is something of an effort.
July 19, 2008 at 11:49 pm |
There are customers that begin a relationship knowing they will never be happy. (Sometimes I think I am that way with banks). I have found that behind most desruptive customers, there is usually an unmet or unaddressed need, either by us or by a previous service provider. If we can dig deep enough to find this unmet, we can usually turn these customers around. Some, however, cannot be turned.
When customers take up so many resources that they become desruptive to the business, we need to start reconsidering the value of the relationship. There are times a customer and a business are not matched. Although very rare, I think there are times when one should say good bye to a customer, in a respectful and bi-lateral manner. Not all customers are good for our business. Feels funny to say it, but its true.
July 20, 2008 at 12:12 pm |
I appreciate your response very much. You brought up “disruptive to business”, and you’re right. Thank you… !