Firing Bad Customers

Why it can be therapeutic to fire customers.

I suddenly realized the other day that I have never written an article on how to fire a customer! Or why a company would want to in the first place.

From my experience, most businesses never officially fire customers. They just muddle along trying to do their best. If the business has a very troublesome customer, the employees usually just grit their teeth and get through it and/or try to get a co-worker to deal with the problem customer.

Sometimes the employees “fire” the customer without telling the boss or asking for approval! They simply decide that this specific customer is horrible and they make things so miserable for the customer that the customer never returns. This is NOT the correct, preferred method to fire bad customers!!!!!

There is a danger of even mentioning this subject to the employees (or owners, for that matter) about “firing bad customers” for fear that they will start to fire every customer that they have (even the slightest or in some cases, imaginary) problems with!

Which customers should be fired?

There is a world of difference between a customer who is having a bad day and one who consistently chops people up. Show me a person who is always nice and never gets upset and I will show you a person from another planet!! Alien Alert!

Here are some of the reasons to fire a customer:

• Threatening employees: Anyone making personal threats should be “let go”. Personal threats do NOT mean threatening to talk to the manager about bad service but any sort of threat of physical violence.
• Unwarranted, over-the-top verbal abuse including swearing abusively. If a customer continues this type of behavior – despite asking them to stop, it is probably time to give them the heave –ho.
• Constantly demanding extra service or attention. This last category is, by far, more common than the other three. For example, a customer who calls back three times a day, demanding to speak to you and gets angry with all of the employees, and expects you do provide lots of extra service or products for free. And then even when you and your staff treat the customer perfectly, they still complain and tell everyone how you robbed them!

Everyone has different tolerance levels for this sort of thing. Any trained and competent customer service person understands the cardinal rule of the trade: Don’t take it personally. I have seen both ends of the spectrum.  Once I saw a clerk in a gas station “fire” a customer simply because the customer complained that the credit card reader outside was broken. More than once, I have seen a receptionist take far too much aggravation from a customer who should have been fired on the spot.

The point is, that you have to balance being tolerant, patient and having thick skin, with knowing when keeping a destructive customer around is creating real turmoil for your company and employees.

Use your better judgment

There are no hard and fast rules for when to fire a customer. Each case has to be taken individually. The manager must look at many factors: The effect the customer has on the staff as a whole; any mitigating circumstances regarding the customer’s upset; the length of time the person has been a customer; their history as a customer, etc.

If you are an auto mechanic and you mistakenly damage a customer’s car while you are test-driving it, of course the customer will be very upset. One would use considerably more care and empathy with someone upset in these circumstances.

Sometimes, customers get incredibly upset and abusive over very minor things, I have even seen customers become upset over an imaginary error or complete misunderstanding.

There are many articles advising that your main criteria for deciding whether to fire a customer or not is to calculate how much money the customer spends at your business. The idea being that if they are high paying customers, you shouldn’t fire them. This is understandable, but I don’t agree with this viewpoint. In my view, you should weigh how much stress they bring to you and your employees.

Having several really horrible customers can cause you to lose your best staff and make working conditions for you and your employees miserable and really, no amount of money from the customer is worth that.

Employees who want to fire customers often

If I have an employee who is constantly clamoring for me to fire customers, I become very interested in what THAT employee is doing! Any employee who has a short temper and poor listening skills may think that the company needs to fire half of the customers! Rather than starting to fire customers, you are better off re-training, reposting or replacing that employee!

How do you fire a customer?

 

The best way to let a customer know that they are fired is to write them a letter.

The worst possible thing to do when firing a customer is to speak to them when you are angry. If there has been an upset or incident, which has convinced you to end your relationship with the customer, take a few days and collect your thoughts.

What you DO want to do is to end the customer/provider relationship as painlessly and professionally as possible without making it any more stressful for you or the customer. This should help prevent poor word-of-mouth.

Of course, once you are to the point of firing the customer, you are probably not hoping for a positive review, but on the other hand there is no sense in driving the customer to make even more bad waves for your business.

So, take some time and write a letter.

What to say?

Here is a simple outline with a few ideas, try something like this:

Dear John Doe,

 

I am writing to you regarding your relationship with our business. It has come to my attention that you have indicated displeasure with either our services or our team.

 

It appears that we are no longer able to fulfill your ________ needs to your satisfaction and, therefore, are unable to retain you as our customer/client.  As an alternative, we would like to suggest that you select another ___type of business provider___ who may be better suited to meet your needs.

 

We thank you for your past business and wish you the best of success in finding another __type of business that will be a better fit for you.

 

Sincerely,

Business Owner

The above letter is simply a starting point; you can quickly fill in the blanks and mail away. There is no need to outline in the letter what you feel the customer did wrong, or explain WHY you are choosing not to do business with them anymore; it is generally a waste of time and may stir things up and make things worse. Remember, the purpose of the letter is to fire the customer, not reform them If you want to reform them, then you need a different type of letter! This letter is sent specifically to fire them, so keep it simple!

The letter should be: short; professional; non-accusatory and make it very clear that you would like the customer to go elsewhere for services/products.

Customer Responses

Don’t be surprised if you send the letter and the customer calls you back right away apologizing and wanting to make amends. This happens 30% to 40% of the time. If they do this, I would consider giving them another chance. I have seen this work out well in many cases. Of course if the customer’s bad behavior starts to happen again, I would suggest firing them again right away and make sure it is for good!

Different types of business

There are definitely types of businesses where you are more likely to get rude customers. For example, a drive-up window at McDonalds ; people working at a government office that serves the public – oftentimes people come in actually looking for a fight even before they arrive.

 

What happens if you don’t fire customers?

If you have a customer clearly deserving to be fired and yet you do nothing about the situation, it lowers staff morale. It will appear to your staff that you care more about the customer’s money than you do about them – your trusted employees.

The holy commandment that “the customer is always right” is not only wrong, but tends to invalidate your employees if there is a crazy customer around. I have seen many employees punished, or even fired, in situations where it should have been the customer who was fired, not the employee!

Keeping customers around after they have repeatedly created turmoil in a company has a detrimental effect on the overall atmosphere of the business. If employees have just spent time dealing with a badly behaving customer – their interaction with the next customer might also be compromised. In fact, having to deal with one really horrible customer can sour a customer service person for an entire day.

The above is related to how abusive customers affect employees. Let’s look at how an abusive customer can affect you, the business owner using the following example:

You have a consulting client who always calls and demands special service, does not respect your time, or schedule and expects you to put your other clients on hold to help them only. You have had several heart-to-heart conversations with the customer and there has been no change in their behavior. If you spend a few hours dealing with this customer’s complaining, whining, criticizing and special demands – it could have a considerable negative effect on your dealings with your next customer. In fact, burn-out can often be traced to being saddled with several of these overly demanding and unpleasant customers. After a while, you may decide to give up consulting altogether!

Part of a manager’s job is to back up and support their employees. This creates employee loyalty.

Another key manager duty is to ensure that the best level of customer service is delivered.

These duties take intelligence, diligence and understanding. And sometimes, firing “bad” customers can help you achieve both.

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