Fire Clients and Feel Better!

As business owners, we have finite resources. We only have a certain amount of time, staff, advertising and inventory to invest in developing sales. To be profitable, we have to direct those resources toward “good” customers. What’s “good”? Maybe you define a good customer as someone who has reasonable requests, makes multiple purchases, refers others and pays on a timely basis. We all have dealt with people who don’t fit that model. In order to grow the business and be more profitabable, we have to consider “firing” those clients who don’t fit the good customer model.
Sprint recently took a dramatic step in this direction. “Sprint…which recently launched an advertising campaign to attract new customers, is disconnecting more than 1,000 subscribers for calling its customer service lines too often and making what the company called unreasonable requests… Sprint said the cancellations involved 1,000 to 1,200 customers who had called the company about 40,000 times a month in total.” A spokesperson explained that some people were calling customer service hundreds of times a month on issues that Sprint felt were already resolved- far in excess of a normal calling rate.
Obviously, firing clients needs to be done carefully. “Sprint waived final balances on canceled accounts and gave customers 30 days to transfer their phone numbers to other wireless providers…” Finally, you and the customer will be happier. You’ll invest your time and energy in a better client. They will find someone who will meet their needs- or figure out that their needs are unreasonable!
The Lesson: No business can growth and improve without getting rid of unprofitable clients. While the process needs to be implemented carefully, it must be put in place for the business to succeed.
Your Homework: What was the last client that left on their own- “firing themselves”? What caused them to leave? What was your reaction- concern or relief?
(Source: “Sprint Fire Customers Over Unreasonable Requests”, Reuters, 7/9/07)