It is undeniable that great customer service is important to every business. However, it will be a total waste of time and money to invest in the wrong customer. The well-known phrase “The customer is always right” was originally coined by Harry Gordon Selfridge, the founder of Selfridges department store in London, and is typically used by companies to assure customers that they will get good service or convince employees to give customers good service. However, some customers will waste your time and resources without providing the results that you’re hoping for.
The phrase doesn’t seem to be always right or helpful to fledgling businesses anyway, especially if we are to consider this: not every customer is a good customer.
Communication strategist Baishali Mukherjee says mongst 50 customers there will be at least 5 who will end up rubbing you the wrong way. So, if you’re spending a lot of time serving bad customers who have a low average transaction size, who don’t spread the word, and always complain about the price, it doesn’t make sense to attract more of those customers. Does it?
Let’s look at 5 reasons why every customer is not a good customer:
1. Some customers are more demanding than their worth
If you are running a small business, in the early days of your business you’ll be grateful for customers of any kind, no matter how demanding they might be. But as your business grows you’ll find that some customers are more valuable than others. Profitable businesses are generally those that identify valuable customers, build relationships with them and work to bring in new customers with a similar profile.
You need to draw a line when the stress of serving a bad customer negatively impacts your employees. Parting ways might seem difficult at first, but your company’s welfare and growth may essentially depend on it.
2. Your resources are limited
The ugly truth is there are some customers who will never be satisfied, no matter how far you bend over. These customers will always find something to complain about. If you’ve done your best to address their issues, you shouldn’t feel guilty about moving on. After all, you have limited resources, time and patience.
3. Customer is not an expert
There will be times when customers think they are the expert. Rather than acting like the customer is always right, a better solution is to treat your customers like you are the expert. Of course, do this without coming across as arrogant.
4. Rude customers can erode employee morale
Your employees are the first ones who will feel the pressure from rude customers. Learn to listen to them. If a customer contacts you with a frequency far above the average, wasting too much of your employee’s time, complaining, asking unnecessary questions and the like, he might not be worth keeping.
Dealing with such a bad customer will only leave your employees feeling miserable. Besides, a customer who doesn’t treat your staff with respect doesn’t deserve your time and effort.
5. Payment Issues
9Do you have a customer who keeps on adding requests to a project or changing their mind about what they want, and refusing to pay when it is time to pay? Or perhaps trying to postpone the payment with silly excuses? That’s a bad customer for you. The solution? Let him go. Yes! If you don’t he will cost you money and time you should be devoting to other clients and projects.
