Firing Customers
Tons of professional marketers will tell you firing a customer is BAD, really bad and I totally disagree with that. Even if I’m always nice, courteous and a good listener I fire customers without problems and I’m right doing it.
My experience tells me that difficult customers cost you money, time (which is also money) and reputation. I have several examples of customers I should have fire:
- This one before purchasing asked what were the guaranties we would ship his product very soon? I explained that we usually ship the same business day if the order was made before 4pm. He placed order at 11am on a Friday, we forwarded his tracking number around 3pm. I received a charge back notice the next Monday at 7am because he still didn’t receive his package and suspected a fraud. The package was delivered by UPS on Tuesday after 4pm. Cost for us? the $99.99 product he purchased, $25 charge back fee, $7.27 shipping cost for a total of $132.26 We defended the charge back but PayPal declined the claim. This one left a very negative feedback on Shopping.com
- This one purchased a rufurbished Laptop for $599.99 free shipping. Soon after she called asking to change her order to a $699.99 one, then called back asking to cancel everything all together but talking to her helped decide that the $599,99 one was what she needed and it was a good deal for her. She received the laptop kept it for 3 days then put it with the accessories in a bubble lined envelope and returned it with USPS media mail then called her credit card company to make a chargeback. The laptop arrived 2 weeks later broken. Authorize.net tried to work with us to fix the issue but as the laptop was broken she refuse to have shipped back even worth she asked for a refund for the media mail postage. Total cost of this operation: $657 plus a broken laptop to have recycled for a $15 fee. She filed a very negative feedback on BBB.org
Few good examples of Fired customers:
- Yesterday a guy ordered a $29.99 Headset using Google Checkout, first email he sends ask if the quality of this headset will be as good as a Bose QuietComfort 3 headset. I reply that nothing can compare with a QuietComfort 3 and even if this $29.99 Sony headset is quite good (I own one) the Bose is quite different and better. He replies he wants to check it by himself. I went to Google Checkout, didn’t charge his account but cancelled the order all together. I explained customer that I wasn’t comfortable with the test he wanted to do as the Bose is undoubtedly better than the Sony. This one would have returned the headset 100% guaranteed!
