Fire Your Worst Customers

It may seem counter-intuitive to fire a customer. Especially now when the economy is in a downturn and remodeling is not on the top of everyone’s buying list.

But firing a customer may be just the thing you need to create room in your business for more happy customers.

Now I’m not talking about the person who has a few questions or asks you to fix an item that they don’t think is correct. Using good communication skills, you should be able to deal with just about all customer concerns and questions.

But you’ll run into one or two people who aren’t happy people. No matter what you do or how you do it, they aren’t satisfied. Or they are just down people. They like to complain. They bring everyone around them down. And they take up an awful lot of your time and your company’s time. Plus they are not going to give you referrals.

We had a customer that we did several jobs for. All of the projects came out great and she was satisfied with everything. But she is just not a happy person. I’m sure that there are reasons behind her unhappiness but we found her attitude was wearing on everyone in our company. So we made a decision to remove her from our mailing lists. She doesn’t receive any marketing that we send out to our past customers. Of course, we will cover any warranty issues that she may have. But we most likely would not do any more work for her, no matter how large or small the project.

Firing a customer can be a liberating feeling once it’s done. But before you make that decision, make sure that you and your staff have done everything you possibly can to create a satisfied customer.