Whither Problem Customers?
Tina Hilton of Clerical Advantage, writing on Grant Griffith’s blog Home Office Warrior, wrote an interesting post that got me thinking about how I want my life to be and how I want my business to look. The topic of her article is problem customers and their impact on business.
There’s an interesting comparison to be drawn between how entrepreneurs handle this idea and how managers or employees address it.
At a restaurant where I once worked, we received abusive complaints from time to time. The manager would shuck and jive, eventually comping food for the complainant in the hopes of keeping their business. (Like averting negative feedback on eBay in the hopes of maintaining a pristine rating).
His response was predictably consistent—make the customer happy at all costs. Even known complainers and problem customers got the same treatment. I remember a placard on the wall that read
“Every unhappy customer will result in 12 others who won’t show up or come back.”
Or some such.
This is why excellent guest service or customer service is a critical part of any business interested in success. Of course it’s necessary to do my absolute utmost to ensure client / guest / customer satisfaction. But there’s a point beyond which I have to look at what’s going on and assess whether or not MORE is actually better.
I encouraged my boss to run the numbers to determine if the complainers were WORTH the time they took to please.
If you know how much your time is worth per minute, and can figure out an average amount of time each problem customer takes, you can objectively see how much money you’re losing by keeping that customer around.
Just figure out how much of your time they waste and compare it to how much income they generate for you. Don’t forget to factor in the emotional stress that long-term problem clients can cause. The disruption. The constant and ever-increasing demands. We’re talking about the quality of your working life here!
Of course my boss never ran those numbers - he subscribed to “The Customer is Always Right” mentality, fed to him by the higher-ups. He consistently taught our customers that they could walk all over us for the honor of keeping them as customers.
I think it pays to be selective, in business and in all other relationships. The clients and friends that I choose to surround myself with all support me in some way or another. They wouldn’t be in my life otherwise.
The great thing about flying solo is that I get to choose whom and how I influence, and vice versa. Life is too short to suffer fools gladly.
I say, aggressively edit out those in your life that bring you down!
Command and Conquer Your Home Business Projects with Mind Maps
Probably the biggest challenge with running my own home business is wearing all the hats all the time. I switch constantly from sales guy to marketing guy to writer, videographer, copy editor, strategist…ad nauseum.
Truth is, I can’t do it all, and I can really only do a few things really well.
Maybe you’re in the same boat. Have you started using virtual assistants yet? This blog will eventually dive in to outsourcing at some point, but for now I’m going to suggest that when you are finally ready to hire some virtual assistants to help share your hatload, the following [...] Continue Reading…
Mindset Series: The Best Way to Make Sure Your Home Business Makes Enough Money to Survive (and Keep You From Going Back to Work for Someone Else)
This post is the first in an ongoing series about how successful home office types can free themselves from their businesses one step at a time by adopting the proper success mindset. Topics I’ll discuss in the series include:
How to market your expertise to generate new profit centers in your business
How to recession-proof your business by developing a loyal following of raving fans who buy from you again and again
How to migrate your business to a new model using the Internet as distribution channel
Fear is the Mind Killer
The home business owner’s biggest fear is not having enough money to [...] Continue Reading…
Series: Google Liberates the Home Office, Part 1-Gmail
This post is the first in an ongoing series about how web-savvy home office types can free themselves from their businesses one step at a time using Google Apps. Topics I’ll discuss in the series include:
Using Gmail as the first step towards getting my home office out of my home and accessible anywhere.
Google Calendar to manage scheduled actions and commitments.
Staying current with Google Reader
Research and note-taking with Google Notebook
Google Docs as THE alternative to Microsoft Office.
So let’s start with Gmail. For years, I held onto my beloved desktop email software: Mail.app on Mac OS X. The usual Apple polish [...] Continue Reading…
Embrace the Digital Home Office
I founded Home Office Web Tools for one purpose: to teach home office workers, small business owners, and entrepreneurs how to transmogrify their businesses using Web 2.0 and social media technology.
In my search for ways to manage my various past businesses 100% digitally, the wealth of resources available simply confused my preoccupied mind. I had enough to do without experimenting with yet another untried, untested online service.
Mustering the time and focus necessary to discover reliable, authoritative forums and reviews proved too challenging to balance with family responsibilities, a day job, etc. and it occurred to me that other home [...] Continue Reading…