“The customer is always right” – yeah ok, whatever! Lol

I have owned my own business in the service, retail and production industry for 17 years and one thing I can promise you is that the customer is NOT always right!

After a certain amount of time and experience you learn to differentiate which customers are worth that extra mile and which ones simply aren’t worth even having! I have reached a stage in business where if I feel that a customer is actually costing me time or money unnecessarily, I will happily advise them to go elsewhere.

"But they contribute to your earnings" you might say... No, this is not always the case. Certain customers are so utterly taxing on your time that when you weigh it up against their spend value it is actually not worth the time, effort or the money.

Some of them are also just complete "problem children" and you will find that no matter how much you bend over backwards, they are never happy - often discovering that they have "company hopped" quite a bit too. ie. Their business relationships with most companies are short lived because they are A) never satisfied no matter how hard you try and/or B) the company they have been dealing with has reached the above conclusion and the customer has been forced to take their business elsewhere.

My current business has been around for 11 years now and as far as customer service goes, we have an absolutely flawless reputation. Our online presence verifies this with our countless reviews and five star rating... I owe this rating not only to my approach in terms of management but even more so to that of my team - and the reason they do their jobs so brilliantly is because they know I have their backs. I will NOT tolerate customers being abusive or unrealistically demanding towards them or to myself unnecessarily.

I had a customer like that this week.

We are a design and print business and if you ask us for a certain size end product then that is what we are going to give you. We are not going to supply you a half finished job, still "stepped up" on a flat sheet - we are OBVIOUSLY going to cut it and cutting has a fee - unless the customer specifically requests that we leave it in sheet form. (apologies for the possibly foreign language lol)

Now let me give you a little bit of background... This particular job was such a small order in terms of print quantity (and price lol) so everything had to be hand cut as it was too little for electric guillotining. Now hand cutting is labour intensive and very time consuming. I did her a huge favour by NOT charging an exorbitant amount for cutting but believe it or not... she STILL complained! Her cutting fee was R50 which is equivalent to about 3.8 us dollars. It was pittance!!!!

I agreed to reduce it for her but insisted that she please specify in future if she does NOT want us to cut her jobs for her.

She continued to complain even about R25...

This is where my tolerance hits zero. Despite her lack of logic on any level whatsoever and having absolutely no leg to stand on in terms of validating her complaint, I STILL attempted to accommodate her tantrum and offered the reduction in the already minimal cost.

I replied to her last email with this statement "How about we just scrap the entire invoice for you. You may collect your free goods whenever it is convenient for you."

This is essentially my way of saying - screw you! please come and collect your job and take your business elsewhere.

Not surprisingly, I got no response to that, but suddenly the full invoice was paid.

Now this was a mild scenario. We do, and I am sure many others deal with far more severe cases, but the principle is the same throughout. Assessing the frequency of her business, the value of each order and the amount of STRESS she causes every time my team has to deal with her, I have come to the conclusion that she is simply NOT worth having as a customer.

Although I don't think she will come back anyway, not after my last email... but if for some reason she was particularly stubborn and does, she will be very promptly assisted out the door. I will NOT do business with people like that. End of story! (almost lol)

Tough cookie I guess lol - but being in business for a long time toughens you up so that you can very swiftly get rid of the weeds in your garden. hehe :)

Excellent customer service is always on the top of my list but so is looking after my teams and customer relations should be respectful both ways - always.

Well that is what I think anyway :)

Until next time...

Much Love from Cape Town, South Africa xxx