Difficult customers

How difficult do you let your difficult customers get?

We all know the phrase ‘The customer is always right’, but are they? Difficult customers seem to be remembered more than the nice ones and course more headaches and stress than all the good ones put together!

Be careful, because you can get caught out on this one – if you go the extra mile the customer can bite you back!

This has happened to me a few times in business – one case was allowing time to pay and allowing a customer to have different payment terms to the norm – this ended up in court chasing the debt. This same customer is still ‘playing a game’ trying at every point to prolong the agony and although we got judgment in court and sent in the bailiffs, he is now trying to have the judgement set aside! Low and behold, the cars on the drive are not his, he apparently does not live at the house he had the work done at and

Another situation I have seen is a customer wanting a piece of furniture made in a certain way – we had told the customer over and again that this would not work. The customer insisted and we obliged – the customer is always right after all. We took them to court for non-payment and lost the case because the furniture was not right, as we had pointed out, but we should have know better.

So be careful, customers can catch you out for doing good!

Happy making money in business!

Difficult customers

4 thoughts on “Difficult customers

  1. Whoever came up with phrase ‘the customer is always right’ was undoubtedly a customer…who was wrong about the fact that they were always right!

  2. In our field sometimes the customer might not know what they want. In those cases it is sometimes easier to convince them and even say ‘No’. Maybe listening better or referring the customer to another contractor might help.

  3. I could’t agree more with you. … but when should it be prudent to say ‘no’? It is very difficult to say NO, specially when you are building relationships.

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