Dumping the Customer

THD said:

A short story on "firing a customer"-Years ago I was CFO at a very large Nashville Hotel well known for the quality of its service and its staff. Our GM insisted on it. One weekend, a quite famous singer demanded a breakfast that was not on the room service menu, one that was normally prepared tableside. When advised that was not available by my room service cashier, he was rude and verbally abusive. He was the same to me and threatened the sous chef of not being able to fix a McMuffin. it got to the point where I called the GM at home. He asked that the customer be taken to his office and we would meet. When he arrived, he asked the guest if it was explained to him that what he wanted was not available, when told yes, but the guest wanted it anyway, our GM told him-"I will have our Guest Service staff pack your bags, our limo will take you to any other hotel you wish, but you will not treat my staff that way, You are no longer welcome in our hotel." Well, it took about 60 seconds for that to get around to all 700 employees. From that point on, every employee would have jumped off the roof for that GM. He had just guaranteed that every other guest would receive great service from every employee. For me, a valuable lesson learned early in my business career.

Click to expand...

Great story! Thanks for sharing...

Xxx

When we go places for work, be it White Plains, New York, or Warsaw, Poland to name two of our latest location shoots, we use web reviews when selecting restaurants because we have zero local knowledge. If we see more than one or two negative reviews, we cross the place off our list.

When we buy a big ticket item like our new refrigerator and dual-fuel range, for example, we read the Consumer Report reviews (and others) but we also read the reviews. If there are more than just a very few negative reviews, we cross the item off our list.

Everybody I know does the same thing. To think that consumers don't give much weight to negative reviews, even the simple "Food and service suck" reviews, is truly naive as to how people select and buy stuff now.

With so many choices, especially among services-- restaurants, hotels, yard services, plumbers, car dealers, you name it-- very few people are going to bother researching if XYZ Roofing is really any good or not. They read the reviews and if there are too many negative ones for whatever their threshold is, they simply move on to the next provider on the list.

I'm sure there are plenty of exceptions, but I don't know anybody who doesn't shop this way.

Daddyo said:

Yelp... Last I checked my company had 16 glowing reviews. Every single one is buried under the words "16 reviews that are currently not recommended". The link is un-highlighted and is nearly invisible....[/URL]

Click to expand...

I find that "recommended review" thing that Yelp does so annoying I never use them. I'll decide which reviews I want to consider, not them. I hate that feature so much I'll never go there as long as they do that.

Not too many restaurants DON'T have a couple negative reviews unless you only go to the best place in town (just the same as getting it straight from your closest friends) and I have yet to see anything online that had 25 or more reviews that didn't have at least a couple 1 star and ""would not recommend from a friend" ratings.

Between the two of us on my boat, we do about 90+ percent of our shopping/dining online because where we live, my job and our 4 month winter cruise.

I would say most younger people I know are even more aggressive in sifting through the trash "reviews" online.

Naïve can go both ways depending on your success in getting what you expect.

Marin said:

When we go places for work, be it White Plains, New York, or Warsaw, Poland to name two of our latest location shoots, we use web reviews when selecting restaurants because we have zero local knowledge. If we see more than one or two negative reviews, we cross the place off our list.

When we buy a big ticket item like our new refrigerator and dual-fuel range, for example, we read the Consumer Report reviews (and others) but we also read the reviews. If there are more than just a very few negative reviews, we cross the item off our list.

Everybody I know does the same thing. To think that consumers don't give much weight to negative reviews, even the simple "Food and service suck" reviews, is truly naive as to how people select and buy stuff now.

With so many choices, especially among services-- restaurants, hotels, yard services, plumbers, car dealers, you name it-- very few people are going to bother researching if XYZ Roofing is really any good or not. They read the reviews and if there are too many negative ones for whatever their threshold is, they simply move on to the next provider on the list.

I'm sure there are plenty of exceptions, but I don't know anybody who doesn't shop this way.

Click to expand...

We use reviews all the time on our travels and purchases. Right beside our charts and Active Captain and other resources, we have Trip Advisor and Google and sometimes others. Most of the time the restaurant and attraction reviews are very consistent across sources. We also read the reviews for specifics. Price too high we dismiss as the price is what it is and that's a separate issue. But service slow, rude, steak tough as rawhide, seafood not fresh, those things we read. 20 glowing reviews, one bad, we ignore. 10 glowing, 5 bad, we think there's a problem.

Thanks to Circuit City, passed away long ago, but they were the first appliance and electronics store to put reviews on their web site. Was a scary proposition to find yourself selling something and it's gotten a lot of one star reviews. But quickly others followed and they found out it's to their benefit assisting customers in good choices. Even when we're out shopping and see some cute gadget we think we might like we pull it up on Amazon. I recall one day a woman was looking at the same item we were. We pulled it up and the reviews said it was junk and everyone was returning theirs to Amazon. So did it cost the store a sale? Or save the store from having an upset customer?

We honestly find Consumers Report to be the least use. We are not product testers so what they think may not mean as much to us. We're consumers and value what consumers say. That's except safety issues which we do take seriously. Sometimes Consumers Report's method of grouping and comparing just is difficult. For instance, they take 50-60 hp outboards. Two brands have a 50, one a 55, and one a 60. Guess which performs the best?

Pretty sure this is thread drift. But a colleage sent me this letter from an angies list (another review site) customer of his. Talk about extortion;

"[FONT=&quot]As you know, I found your company through Angie's List and plan on writing a review at the end of this process. I think there are two ways I could write my review and how I end up writing it will depend on how resolution of this goes. If we are treated fairly, I will stress the excellent work done and wonderful people in your operation in my review. I will also provide you an introduction to [/FONT][FONT=&quot]the[/FONT][FONT=&quot] friend I spoke of who is in need of some work to his home (one of his systems needs to be replaced, I believe). I would also consider hiring you guys again when we need our other bathrooms done. If we don’t believe we are treated fairly, those feelings would be reflected in my review as well[/FONT][FONT=&quot]."

The letter goes on about details of the job. Short story is it all came down to price with this customer, not quality of work, service , etc.

Customers do know how to rattle business owners and they really are getting away with it to some extent. As a business owner, you just have to decide which battles are worth fighting, and when to give up a customer.
[/FONT]

Those are more common than many will admit Bligh. That's about the 5th one I've personally read in the last 2 years and have been told of many others. Price diggers primarily.

I've been a firm believer in firing customers since my first experience doing it about 20 years ago. Taught my wife the value of doing it 3 years ago and her business thrived too as a result.

I also offered a no bs 100% money back satisfaction guarantee, parts and labor. Offered it twice and both customers blushed and refused, I gave it to them anyway. I probably made at least 20 times that amount back from both of those customers between repeat business and referrals.

Marin said:

A famous incident at Southwest Airlines back when Herb Kelleher was running it involved a demanding woman who was making life miserable for one of the airline's counter agents. The passenger was demanding things that the agent simply couldn't do, but the passenger refused to accept this.
...

Click to expand...

Interesting you mention South West. A few months ago I was waiting for a delayed plane to arrive at the airport. The flight was delayed about 45 minutes and I got to the airport early. I had a book about boats to read so all was good.

I sat down at the gate to wait and a guy sat down near me shortly there after. What a POS he was. He was some frequent fliyer and he called some special SW phone number for customer support to complain about the airline. This guy was on the phone to one poor, undeserving employee for over an hour complaining. He would ask her impossible to answer questions like, "Can you guarantee me that the next flight will not be delayed?" or "Will the next flight flight have another mechanical problem?" He went on and on about how bad SW's service was and how it had gone down hill, was worst in the business, ya da ya da ya da. I was thinking if SW was so bad, and you fly so much, use another company.

Now, he never raised his voice at that saintly employee, he only cussed once or twice but he was annoying to everyone who could hear him. I was watching the crowd watch him and if looks could kill he would have been toast. One lady did go and fuss at him for bad language. Like I said, he only used a few bad word in over an hour of talking so he was not rude in that way, but I think the lady was tired if hearing his sh...t and used the cuss word as an excuse to tell the guy off.

I was trying to figure out how I could help the employee on the phone but I never could find a solution, though NOW that I think about it a bit more, I do have an idea. A bit late though.

The employee should have gotten an award for how she handled that miserable piece of humanity.

Later,
Dan

Marin said:

A famous incident at Southwest Airlines

BUT..... that was then and this is now. Ron brings up an excellent albeit unfortunate point. And that is that anyone today has the power to severely damage if not destroy a business simply by sitting at his or her keyboard. I have heard a few local news stories recently about the devastating effect bad reviews on internet services like Yelp have had on busiensses, particulary smaller businesses.

I have read recently of the increasing number of busiensses--- restaurants I think--- which refuse to partcipate in star ratings because of the potential for attracting bogus bad reviews.

The internet can be a great source of information. But with that comes the very real potential for destructive information because there is no way to know what's true and what's not.

Repeat customers may recognize bad reviews of the business they are patronizing as bogus. But most people won't, and there is still this inherent belief on the part of most people that "if I read it in print it must be true."

And with no penalties for posting untrue information that has devastating effects on people or organizations, any idiot with a keyboard and a connection can achieve results far, far out of proportion to his or her own signficance.

Click to expand...

Wifey B: As to Southwest I've never flown them but they do some freaky crap sometimes when one person just gets carried away. See the girls they've booted off because they felt their clothes were too revealing? Darn. Those outfits would be way overdressed in South Florida. That's my Alaskan outfit. And others for weird things. Oh well...

To the bad reviews. I think most people can figure out the flamers and trolls nowadays. Ever read apartment ratings and you see..."I had to move and couldn't give them but a week's notice and had six months left on my lease and didn't have time to clean and those %!$$%^ didn't return my deposit." Can you say deadbeat? Or like, "That ugly b.... in the office with the fake lips and too much make up and IQ under 50 and talks like the hood and must be from some backwoods country and is always so full of sh.... I want to kick her a.... back to china or africa or mexico is so rude."

I know there have been some unfairly damaged but most of the time you can respond plus report when you feel it's a vicious attack. Sometimes a competitor does it. Still on the whole not too much. Things with like three reviews may get messed up but then those with 80 and only 5 negative you can figure out if the negative are legit.