Did you ever fire a customer? Telling him to go away and never return, maybe throwing his money after him to be nice?

I've done it several times and now instructed my Helpdesk Team to do the same. Sometimes I get reports that one of my customers has taken around 3 days if their time, complaining about every little thing that is wrong. Even when the customer doesn't get a reply within 10 minutes is one of our complaints - according to the weekly report I got here.

Other problems include: (for services) people expect rush service without paying for it, can't find download link, email landed in spambox, can't find the helpdesk, there's a typo in the product - I want a refund etcetera!

But as you can see, most problems are easy to solve thru a little Q&A. And because some people are the most lazy and dumbest people around, don't forget to include video to SHOW them what to do. If that doesn't help, have them submit a support ticket.

In other cases there simply isn't a solution. The customer consumes a lot of your time and aren't profitable for your business at all. They're only creating trouble and expenses. Sometimes they even curse and post at forums about their bad experiences.

Just let them be. As long as you've done everything in your power to help them, they don't have any chance to harm your reputation or business. Just reply to them in a friendly manner, explain the whole situation and move on. And remember the saying every publicity is good publicity'!

Now here's what happened when I fired several of these customers from hell' - they started posting in forums. I replied to all of them and solved the issues publicly. Those guys crushed their reputation and actually grew mine by making the issue public. During that time I saw an increase in new customers of 348% Just by posting my signature link.

Later a fellow wrote an article about dealing with customers and took my topic as an example. That resulted in an extra 26 sales for a fairly high priced product

Plus think of all the time I saved. The time I now spend on creating new products, attracting new customers and growing my business.

Learn more about this author, Dave Origano.
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