#CustomerRelations #ToxicCustomers #Entrepreneurship
Have you ever “fired” a customer? Why, and how did it go? 🤔
I remember sitting in a room full of entrepreneurs years ago, hearing a speaker talk about the importance of letting go of customers who drain your time and energy. At the time, I was eager for any business I could get, but fast forward to when I finally had a successful business, I understood the truth in those words.
One particular customer was constantly abusive to my team, no matter how much we tried to help. That was the turning point – I had to draw the line and let them go. It felt liberating to prioritize the well-being of my staff and other customers over one toxic individual.
Now, I’m thinking of proactive ways to prevent toxic customers from even signing up. Maybe implementing a screening process or incorporating red flags into our onboarding process could help.
So, fellow founders, have you ever had to say goodbye to a customer? What was the reason, and how did it work out? Let’s share our experiences and strategies to handle toxic customers in a way that benefits everyone involved. 💬🚫
Sure. There are customers we decline to sell to. But there are also customers who receive our special pain in the ass pricing. Right now that rate is approximately triple the normal selling price. A few still order at the PITA pricing and that’s fine; we get compensated for the additional hassle. The rest went to our competitors and that’s fine, too.
I think a lot of what you say, can have to do with a person’s personality. Or at least, the same can be said in my case.
For instance, I personally have always been a rather introverted person, which is why whenever I have had to fire someone, or have a tough conversation in general at work, I have been able to do it all relatively comfortably, since I don’t have any emotional attachment with the people involved, and internally, feel not a lot of pressure to take care of a person’s feelings. I suppose at the workplace I tend to harbor a kind of get-things-done-without-fuss attitude, that helps me through uncomfortable situations of the aforementioned kind.
On the other hand, it is doubly hard for me to have tough conversations with members of my own family and friend circle, as being surrounded by such people always lulls you into feeling much more conscious of people’s feelings.
Of course, being introverted doesn’t mean not bothering to hone your communication skills. Even if I am an introvert, I think I have always been able to speak out when it matters, in an efficient, effective manner, as a result of which I have managed to handle tough conversations/situations at work, in a professional, polite manner.
Simply put, in my humble opinion, a person’s social skills can make or break their managerial skills.
I think there should be a public yelp-style platform to rate customers. How awesome would that be if you could avoid these people altogether by reading what other people had to say.
We keep a HCFB (heinous cunt faced bitch) list at my office. Once you’re on that list you can fucking kick rocks. You’re banned
Yes. I am a rabbit boarder. And I’ve had to refuse clients for such reasons as:
1. One wanted me to travel to her house one hour each way daily to take care of her 7 rabbits while her husband was at home
2. One called me on a holiday to say she needs help with her sick rabbit and would not stop texting me for hours and told me didn’t even know if she would be able to go through with the booking she had with me
3. One blew me off twice at a meet and greet
My team of VAs are protected by a zero tolerance policy for abuse. No customer is immune.
I expect my team to treat everyone with respect and that goes both ways.
We always attempt to de-escalate first and include a one time warning max.
In the rare occasions where they’ve still faced abuse, I’ve simply recommended customers to go elsewhere, end all communications effective immediately, and block their communication/access to my team.
I’ve never lost any sleep with those decisions.
In the beginning it’s ok – and almost necessary – to eat shit for the sake of revenue and building traction. But as soon as you’re stable enough to know that you can quickly replace the revenue with a new customer, set hard lines for you and your team and don’t lose sleep over telling a customer to take a hike.
I’m in the cannabis space, which is highly regulated. That means we require a lot from our customers in order to comply with FinCEN and state regulators. If a client is unwilling to or unable to play by the rules or furnish the documents needed for us to stay compliant, they’re asked to leave.
20% of customers are 80% of your profit. 20% of customers are 80% of your problems. They are not the same 20%.
If you look after the right customers and get rid of the troublesome ones your business will run much better.
When I get a new salesman one of the most important things for them to learn is what customers not to take.
Yes. I’ve had to fire customers.
From my experience and others I’ve seen, these are some reasons to fire a client.
* **payment issues** – if the client won’t pay or repeatedly delays payment
* **broken communication** – not returning or ignoring calls and emails for days and weeks
* **ghosting** – this falls under communication, but if we’re in the middle of a project and the client disappears for a few months with no communication only to appear later “ready to continue” then it becomes unworkable.
* **disrespect** – continual rudeness or dismissiveness is no way to treat people
* **excessively disorganized**
* **inability to make decisions** – I had a one-week project (two weeks max) stretch to 2.5 months due to client rabbit holes and shifting
* **anger issues** – if a client is angry at everyone in their life, eventually that anger will be directed at you.
* **overly picky** – yes, go the extra mile (or 10 miles) but some clients are never satisfied and that’s usually trouble.
* **extremely cheap** – sometimes helping a client who doesn’t have much money comes back to bite you.
* **inability to listen or compromise**
Granted some of these are a matter of learning to set clear expectations and defining things in a contract prior to working.
Live and learn.
Rank customers on a graph where the x-axis is the net profit they contribute, and the y-axis is how big of a pain in the ass they are. It makes the decision of “is it worth it” much easier.
A lot of threats of lawsuits/arbitration agencies…
Fired due to trying to exploit the team, nickle-and-diming, and being a general nuisance. Very worth doing if it is stopping you from actually achieving any goals.
Yeah I dig d this guy on yelp who wanted a web site built. Lot of red flags which I ignored because I needed the money. He was paying me $200/mo but acted like it was $200/hour. I fired him after I finished the design
I’ve fired a few at this point. The biggest causes are; frequent late or non-payment (I usually put them on pre-pay first), entitlement/rudeness/bad attitude, budget doesn’t match demands or constant haggling, inability to adhere to the contract (especially regarding revisions in custom products), unrealistic demands even after the expectation has been set, and dishonesty. One client’s accounting department was downright hostile, and I was just tired of it.
I, like others, charge a PITA premium and gradually hike it until they’re worth it or they go somewhere else. I’ve also straight up given people the contact info for other agencies, and one of them came back with a better attitude after getting kicked around by the big dogs.
Working with other business owners especially is a wild ride. The most overconfident and demanding ones are almost always the least successful, comparatively, and I think it’s because everyone is draining their businesses with PITA fees or pawning them off to more expensive service providers.
Often, it’s a powerful feeling to walk away from money. Especially thousands of dollars. Occasionally, I’ve walked back.
I fired one of the largest companies in the insurance industry. It was amazing. They were in disbelief. It had just become clear to me that they needed me a lot more than I need them, so I refused their terms, and said they had to utilize mine. They did for a brief period, then pushed back, and I said, “well, I think this engagement has run it’s course. It’s been a pleasure.” Everyone was professional and cordial, but I know they couldn’t believe it. People who never get stood up to, are interesting when you tell them no.
Yes. The person was racist and couldn’t handle one of my best Account Managers accent. It was significant for the quarter but worth it in the long run.
To this day I am still floored at his profound stupidity and small mindedness.
Multiple.
Dont pay on time.
Or i have to ask for my money …
Or the ones that tell me what the issue is / buy their own parts and due their own diagnostics …. if you can do all that then you can fix the issue yourself.
The ones that ask about price or why so much …. thanks but no thanks
Anyone thats a slight headache…. i dont deal with
Not for my own business but as I was working at mechanic shop as a service advisor, one guy was sexually harassing me and asking me out after being told No numerous times (I’m a decently cute woman) and I told him he wasn’t welcome here anymore. he started threatening to find where I lived and rape me. I called the cops to have him removed from the property. It wasn’t fun and anytime I was by myself I was afraid he would come back.
I’m not going to fire the customer. I’ll just toss them out onto the street out of the event venue, but then again my business is a little bit different than yours and for the record, we’re not actually tossing anyone out of anywhere we’re going to politely ask them to leave, and then contact law enforcement to limit liability
We have a policy that any customer rep can hang up on customers after their second abusive comment. First comment they get a warning, second they are email only clients.
We also put a large customer we had on prepay, knowing they can’t prepay for orders… but they were 9months late on payments and being rude about it like they did nothing wrong. They told us we needed them more than they needed us… turned out that wasn’t the case.
Yeah. They upset the lady that sold the product to them, thought it might just have been a bad day for one or the other of them. Then during onboarding they really upset the our CS agent so we let them know that we were refunding the purchase and wouldn’t be continuing with them.
Their boss emailed and said they’d not had issues with the person before but we both decided to leave it at that.
Yep, a handful of times. Normally I give them “fuck you” pricing to make them go away, rather than fire them. That’s only backfired on me once, but I was happy to watch them squirm over the bill.
I had one customer who wasn’t paying that much for what they were getting and making lots of demands. I eventually told them “this is what we’re doing, there’s nothing beyond that I can do right now, if that’s not good enough I don’t know what to tell you” so they left. I think that sort of counts.
I worked for a large firm and they had a very prescribed manner.
All customers were ranked A, B, C or D (25% each). Ranking was based on profitability / how kids of a pain in the ass they were.
The requirement was the bill out on all D customers had to be doubled the next year. The concept being you would lose 1/2 of them and still make the same income.
Worked pretty well and I often apply a similar approach in my own business significantly rate increasing any unprofitable/annoying customers.
Seamstress. In 45 years I’ve only fired 3 customers and 1 was my daughter.