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Do you get a lot of shitty customers?

What percentage of customers or clients you take on end up being awful to work with?


  • Total voters
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Johnny boy

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Do you have shitty customers sometimes, or do you please everyone?

Do you have employees doing the work, or do you do everything yourself?

Do you offer a service, a product, or something else?

I run a home services company (lawn care), and we get a surprisingly high number of entitled karens who will look you dead in the face, agree to one thing, sign it in a 2-page contract, and then say another thing altogether a month later and flip out when you refer them to the short and simple contract that they signed. It's absolutely bizarre. It happens with about 15% of people that signup. It seems so high, especially since we do such a good job setting expectations and having great customer service, and offer to fix any issues that come up free of charge. 85% are fantastic and have few if any problems. We actually repeat things about 3 times before signing them up. Everything from their initial sales call to their signup to their contract is consistent, clear, and sets expectations well.

It's not a problem, we are the only company that even answers the phones, shows up, etc. We have tons of demand and we keep almost everyone extremely happy. We double in size each year and have the best reviews around, especially considering how new we are. We get referral business, messages from happy customers all the time, etc. It's just odd that 15% are totally nuts.

Is this a problem in your business? How often do you get people who are just absolutely insane?

ETqh4BUXQAUdMqU.jpg
 
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WJK

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Do you have shitty customers sometimes, or do you please everyone?

Do you have employees doing the work, or do you do everything yourself?

Do you offer a service, a product, or something else?

I run a home services company (lawn care), and we get a surprisingly high number of entitled karens who will look you dead in the face, agree to one thing, sign it in a 2-page contract, and then say another thing altogether a month later and flip out when you refer them to the short and simple contract that they signed. It's absolutely bizarre. It happens with about 15% of people that signup. It seems so high, especially since we do such a good job setting expectations and having great customer service, and offer to fix any issues that come up free of charge. 85% are fantastic and have few if any problems. We actually repeat things about 3 times before signing them up. Everything from their initial sales call to their signup to their contract is consistent, clear, and sets expectations well.

It's not a problem, we are the only company that even answers the phones, shows up, etc. We have tons of demand and we keep almost everyone extremely happy. We double in size each year and have the best reviews around, especially considering how new we are. We get referral business, messages from happy customers all the time, etc. It's just odd that 15% are totally nuts.

Is this a problem in your business? How often do you get people who are just absolutely insane?

View attachment 38341
For me, it's less than 10% of my new tenants don't end up fitting in. I try to first encourage those people to move on. If I must, I evict them. But, many of my good tenants stay for years, so I have a low turnover. And I have tenants who grew up here as kids. I have known them just about all of their lives. It's an advantage of retiring in a rural area and intense personal management. (Also, I helped my mother manage this property for many years before I bought the property and moved here permanently .)
 

LeszekM

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Masz czasem gównianych klientów, czy zadowalasz wszystkich?

Czy masz pracowników wykonujących pracę, czy wszystko robisz sam?

Oferujesz usługę, produkt lub coś innego?

Prowadzę firmę zajmującą się usługami domowymi (pielęgnacja trawników) i dostajemy zaskakująco dużą liczbę uprawnionych karen, którzy będą wyglądać ci martwo w twarz, zgadzają się na jedno, podpisują dwustronicową umowę, a potem mówią zupełnie coś innego miesiąc później i odwróć się, gdy polecisz im krótką i prostą umowę, którą podpisali. To absolutnie dziwaczne. Dzieje się tak z około 15% osób, które się rejestrują. Wydaje się, że jest to tak wysokie, zwłaszcza że wykonujemy tak dobrą robotę, ustalając oczekiwania i mając świetną obsługę klienta, a także oferujemy bezpłatne rozwiązanie wszelkich problemów. 85% jest fantastycznych i ma niewiele, jeśli w ogóle, problemów. Właściwie powtarzamy rzeczy około 3 razy, zanim je zapiszemy. Wszystko, od pierwszej rozmowy sprzedażowej po podpisanie umowy, jest spójne, jasne i dobrze określa oczekiwania.

To nie problem, jesteśmy jedyną firmą, która nawet odbiera telefony, pojawia się itp. Mamy mnóstwo popytu i prawie wszyscy jesteśmy bardzo zadowoleni. Każdego roku podwajamy rozmiar i mamy najlepsze recenzje, zwłaszcza biorąc pod uwagę, jak nowi jesteśmy. Cały czas dostajemy polecenia, wiadomości od zadowolonych klientów itp. To dziwne, że 15% to totalnie szaleni.

Czy to jest problem w Twojej firmie? Jak często spotykasz ludzi, którzy są po prostu szaleni?
I am selling B2C, GSM accessories and some small electronics.
We are trying to do the best job as we can, offer positive, proactive customer service but sometimes even that is not enough for crazy malcontent customer.
In that case i try to be as much cultural as i can, close the case as fast as possible, forget this customer and move forward. There is no sense to discuss more with such kind of people.
I know our value and i try not to worry about such cases. But at the beginning, 2 years ago when i start my business all this problematic cases was very stressful for me (shaking hand, higher pressure etc..) but i have learned how to manage with that.

This is why B2B > Everything else for me. Higher baseline quality.

There comes a point where you can't pay me enough to deal with dipshits.
During 2 years once i only need to prepare pre pre-trial summons to our customer which wrote many bad, unpleasant words about us publicly which weren't true. It looks to be 14-16 year old customer.. 1 day after receiving the letter case was positively closed for us.

@Mike Partee in some part it B2B looks much more better, you can create higher VALUE/RANK but i think B2C e-commerce is easier to achieve SCALE.
 
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Brrr

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For the number of customers we see, we get a ridiculously small amount of negative customer interaction. There are some factors that make us generally less prone to getting shitty customers in the first place, namely:
  • Premium product and relatively premium pricing
  • Setting up in more affluent areas
  • Overdelivering on product quality
  • Friendly, staff
  • General cheerful nature of product/work (probably the biggest one, customers are already happy before they come in)
  • Takeaway product, takeaway your problems
This could be just chalked up to selling ice cream -> happy customers. But I know plenty of places and horror stories from people in similar industries. I really make such a point to my staff about customer experience and get them to think about absolutely every aspect of perception, people will come back to somewhere with great customer service but an ok product, they will never go back if they got shit service.

When it comes to "problems" or issues, my training towards staff goes something like this:
  1. Verbalise the issue at hand ->show the customer you are perceptive to their problems
  2. Solve the issue if possible and easy, even if there is a short term cost to us
  3. If we can't solve it offer a sincere apology
  4. Decide if the problem is something that is informing us of an underlying issue that is likely to present itself again (If so, let's put something in place so it doesn't happen again) or if it something that simply occurred because of a sequence of unlucky, events.
  5. Maybe the customer was just being a dick for whatever reason (bad day, kid in hospital, argument with wife)
Lastly, use your staff as a buffer. I realised I would personally get burnt out with customers and eventually start to resent frustrating interactions. Because I was the boss and had no accountability, I would not deal with crap customers as professionally as I should have. Having staff, good staff, creates a layer and a buffer between you and them.

When a customer complains that there are people queuing on the street badly and that I should do something about it they don't get a passive-aggressive "You want me to go out every 10 minutes to tell adults how to stand?" they get a "We will feed it back to our manager". They got their Karen win and it ends there.

In your case @Johnny boy the complaining customers might have just wanted to hear one of your staff members say "Thanks for the feedback, we'll mention it to the boss and we can see what we can do, in the meantime this is the job we are getting paid to do". You've pacified the customer before you then get to deal with you (if it even gets to that stage). If you then come to deal with it, the Karen get's a double win because they got the boss to call them and you then get an opportunity to turn a negative situation into a positive one because you got it from your staff, not from the customer. Just think staff = buffer.

Addendum: things get missed if you don't have effective and immediate staff communication to you. I'm suffering this mistake atm.
 
D

Deleted85763

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Do you have shitty customers sometimes, or do you please everyone?

Do you have employees doing the work, or do you do everything yourself?

Do you offer a service, a product, or something else?

I run a home services company (lawn care), and we get a surprisingly high number of entitled karens who will look you dead in the face, agree to one thing, sign it in a 2-page contract, and then say another thing altogether a month later and flip out when you refer them to the short and simple contract that they signed. It's absolutely bizarre. It happens with about 15% of people that signup. It seems so high, especially since we do such a good job setting expectations and having great customer service, and offer to fix any issues that come up free of charge. 85% are fantastic and have few if any problems. We actually repeat things about 3 times before signing them up. Everything from their initial sales call to their signup to their contract is consistent, clear, and sets expectations well.

It's not a problem, we are the only company that even answers the phones, shows up, etc. We have tons of demand and we keep almost everyone extremely happy. We double in size each year and have the best reviews around, especially considering how new we are. We get referral business, messages from happy customers all the time, etc. It's just odd that 15% are totally nuts.

Is this a problem in your business? How often do you get people who are just absolutely insane?

View attachment 38341
In my experience that is normal. Years ago I worked for a small delivery company and while most customers were very nice some were never happy about the service or anything for that matter. One woman threw a tantrum in front of me when she thought I delivered the wrong item (it was the right item). It's just part of business. I would say 5% to 10% are bad customers. What I learned is to drop these types of customers and keep the good ones. But even the good ones can turn bad. It's on ongoing long-term process. Don't let it bother you.
 
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MitchC

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I have an ecom store and the people I target are affluent and I sell a great product. The customers are all super nice and very happy and reasonable. Maybe 1% are shit but that’s to be expected at scale.

However I started a new business a while back to sell a product that reduced stress. Guess what, I sold about 25 products and had about 10 emails from stressed angry customers before I shut it down.

I realised that when I started my first business I had accidentally started a business that deliberately targeted people who are going to be happy and nice. That is what I will be doing from now on with any future business.

No more targeting stressed angry people.
 

Rabby

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I do what I can to drive off the people who will be terrible customers. Sometimes we quickly refund them and recommend a competitor. It's not worth letting them vent their stress at you... it damages your quality of life, and demoralizes employees.

Look for ways to minimize them, for example if you notice certain neighborhoods or client profiles that have more of these people.

Or if you discover that you're inadvertantly attracting them through ad copy; ie: "Do lawn service companies tick you off when they ___? Well try our company!" That might get you people who are easily ticked off, for example.

15% probably isn't bad in a general consumer market though. At least that many people are jerks or under some kind of stress at any given time. The trick is to market to a subset of the population that makes your life easier :playful:
 

Johnny boy

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Lastly, use your staff as a buffer. I realised I would personally get burnt out with customers and eventually start to resent frustrating interactions. Because I was the boss and had no accountability, I would not deal with crap customers as professionally as I should have. Having staff, good staff, creates a layer and a buffer between you and them.

When a customer complains that there are people queuing on the street badly and that I should do something about it they don't get a passive-aggressive "You want me to go out every 10 minutes to tell adults how to stand?" they get a "We will feed it back to our manager". They got their Karen win and it ends there.

In your case @Johnny boy the complaining customers might have just wanted to hear one of your staff members say "Thanks for the feedback, we'll mention it to the boss and we can see what we can do, in the meantime this is the job we are getting paid to do". You've pacified the customer before you then get to deal with you (if it even gets to that stage). If you then come to deal with it, the Karen get's a double win because they got the boss to call them and you then get an opportunity to turn a negative situation into a positive one because you got it from your staff, not from the customer. Just think staff = buffer.

I hired a customer service person for this reason. She does a great job. I would have so many bad reviews if I were the person talking to these people. I have zero filter usually. Thank god for her lol.
 
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Johnny boy

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The good thing is that as each year passes, the bad customers have been filtered out for the most part from the year prior, and only the new customers are left to filter out, another reason to do recurring services only and not projects.

There's like 80 people from last year who are all very very easy to work with, never complain and don't even make requests, we just keep things tidy and their cards run each month. So that's nice.
 

LeszekM

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Lastly, use your staff as a buffer. I realised I would personally get burnt out with customers and eventually start to resent frustrating interactions. Because I was the boss and had no accountability, I would not deal with crap customers as professionally as I should have. Having staff, good staff, creates a layer and a buffer between you and them.

When a customer complains that there are people queuing on the street badly and that I should do something about it they don't get a passive-aggressive "You want me to go out every 10 minutes to tell adults how to stand?" they get a "We will feed it back to our manager". They got their Karen win and it ends there.

In your case @Johnny boy the complaining customers might have just wanted to hear one of your staff members say "Thanks for the feedback, we'll mention it to the boss and we can see what we can do, in the meantime this is the job we are getting paid to do". You've pacified the customer before you then get to deal with you (if it even gets to that stage). If you then come to deal with it, the Karen get's a double win because they got the boss to call them and you then get an opportunity to turn a negative situation into a positive one because you got it from your staff, not from the customer. Just think staff = buffer.

Addendum: things get missed if you don't have effective and immediate staff communication to you. I'm suffering this mistake atm.
That sounds smart to do that to create such kind of buffer!
 

MitchC

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That sounds smart to do that to create such kind of buffer!
If your business is online, a good place to hire for this is onlinejobs.ph

This was probably the second best thing I ever did in my business, and I only pay about $100/mo for someone to manage it all.

The best thing I did was start using a fulfilment centre
 
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LeszekM

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If your business is online, a good place to hire for this is onlinejobs.ph

This was probably the second best thing I ever did in my business, and I only pay about $100/mo for someone to manage it all.

The best thing I did was start using a fulfilment centre
Thanks i save this website and try to check how it works. How does it work what this person is doing for you?

Yes i see the advantage of fulfilment centre! Of course it is harder to identify your business/brand with customer when somebody is fulfilling it.
 
D

Deleted70138

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The retarded picking up girls advice and bubble camera/asteroid mining ideas that “need?” execution threads got me close but this ones done it. Goodbye.
I'd suggest to have more empathy and understand others point of view, as the only person you can say "goodbye" to, is yourself.
 

Rabby

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The good thing is that as each year passes, the bad customers have been filtered out for the most part from the year prior, and only the new customers are left to filter out, another reason to do recurring services only and not projects.

There's like 80 people from last year who are all very very easy to work with, never complain and don't even make requests, we just keep things tidy and their cards run each month. So that's nice.
This is true. And the bad ones can tell their jerk friends about you, and form a cult of non-customers.
 
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SteveO

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Yes. Many difficult customers.

We have a large amount of retirees that play golf. We also have a number of youngsters that don't have a lot of money.

Our regulars are decent for the most part but there are still a few.

The problem people drive me crazy. My general manager requested that I quit talking to the problem people and to let him handle them. He is diplomatic... I send people packing.

I was working on pouring a slab of concrete in front of the clubhouse. Some guy pulls up in his cart and tells me to milk this company for all I can. He proceeds to tell me that we are ripping people off with our high prices.

The person behind the counter sees him talking to me and comes out. She says "you setup a tee time for 4 and only showed up with 2. That cost us 2 paying customers that could have had those spots. You tried to sneak in your own beer when it is prohibited.

He then told us that he could play at any golf course around for less money.

I told him that I owned the course and that he has already found his solution. "You can play at any of the other courses. They are not as good as ours which is why we are more." I was angry at this point and told him he costs us money when he tries to work the system for his benefit.

Then I went back to work and ignored him.

These interactions are frequent.

Then there was the guy that came in one day and bought a small cup of coffee for 1.25. The next day he came in with his own large mug and was charged 1.75. He commented loudly that "all you want to do is F*ck us in the a$$. The coffee was 1.25 yesterday". The girl behind the counter said "today you got a large, yesterday was a small". No apology, he walked away angry.

I'm glad I wasn't there for that.

During covid, we started charging 10 extra for people that did not want to share a cart. Even our regulars complained. We had to explain that we did not have enough carts to fill the golf course individually, we had to pay the electricity to charge the carts, more wear and tear on the carts and grass. Basically, it costs us a lot more to send people off by themselves.

It never ends really.
 
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LeszekM

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Then there was the guy that came in one day and bought a small cup of coffee for 1.25. The next day he came in with his own large mug and was charged 1.75. He commented loudly that "all you want to do is f*ck us in the a$$. The coffee was 1.25 yesterday". The girl behind the counter said "today you got a large, yesterday was a small". No apology, he walked away angry.

I'm glad I wasn't there for that.
What a story, i love clients like that. Reading this let me knows that it is not so bad here i think.

It is not so easy to be patient is moments like this. You need to be so much self restrained to finish with that type customer.
There is no sense to argue/fight with that kind of people. It is waste of energy.
 

Rabby

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Yes. Many difficult customers.

We have a large amount of retirees that play golf. We also have a number of youngsters that don't have a lot of money.

Our regulars are decent for the most part but there are still a few.

The problem people drive me crazy. My general manager requested that I quit talking to the problem people and to let him handle them. He is diplomatic... I send people packing.

I was working on pouring a slab of concrete in front of the clubhouse. Some guy pulls up in his cart and tells me to milk this company for all I can. He proceeds to tell me that we are ripping people off with our high prices.

The person behind the counter sees him talking to me and comes out. She says "you setup a tee time for 4 and only showed up with 2. That cost us 2 paying customers that could have had those spots. You tried to sneak in your own beer when it is prohibited.

He then told us that he could play at any golf course around for less money.

I told him that I owned the course and that he has already found his solution. "You can play at any of the other courses. They are not as good as ours which is why we are more." I was angry at this point and told him he costs us money when he tries to work the system for his benefit.

Then I went back to work and ignored him.

These interactions are frequent.

Then there was the guy that came in one day and bought a small cup of coffee for 1.25. The next day he came in with his own large mug and was charged 1.75. He commented loudly that "all you want to do is f*ck us in the a$$. The coffee was 1.25 yesterday". The girl behind the counter said "today you got a large, yesterday was a small". No apology, he walked away angry.

I'm glad I wasn't there for that.

During covid, we started charging 10 extra for people that did not want to share a cart. Even our regulars complained. We had to explain that we did not have enough carts to fill the golf course individually, we had to pay the electricity to charge the carts, more wear and tear on the carts and grass. Basically, it costs us a lot more to send people off by themselves.

It never ends really.
Ugh. Can you eject these people? They're probably chasing off the nice customers.
 
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Private Witt

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The problem people drive me crazy. My general manager requested that I quit talking to the problem people and to let him handle them. He is diplomatic... I send people packing.

Good you have someone to counter balance you giving people the boot. I'm the same way, I have low tolerance and has led to regrettable ejections of all sorts.

Also was wondering, have you ever had Footgolf at your course? I went through a period of time I was obsessed with this game as I tore my upper bicep and could not play golf and wanted on the course so bad.
 

SteveO

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Good you have someone to counter balance you giving people the boot. I'm the same way, I have low tolerance and has led to regrettable ejections of all sorts.

Also was wondering, have you ever had Footgolf at your course? I went through a period of time I was obsessed with this game as I tore my upper bicep and could not play golf and wanted on the course so bad.
We don't have it. I don't think anyone in our city is doing this. Will take a closer look.
 
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Private Witt

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We don't have it. I don't think anyone in our city is doing this. Will take a closer look.

A few things I remember researching the sport a few years ago.

Older golfers loathe footgolf at first as they feel it ruins a few things, including soccer balls flying through the air, ruined greens, slows the pace of the game and brings a bunch of shabby dressed hooligans on the course. The last three were debunked as footgolfers play fast, greens are not used, and there is a dress code in the sport that many adhere too. Once much needed revenue is brought to the course and they see its not bad the worries get lower but yet purist will always hate it.

It can do well in areas of large Latino populations due to the love of soccer. Marketing and tournaments can bring these people in.

I dont know the golf business but when 30 - 50 rounds pour in a day at 10 - 20 a shot and increased food/beverage sales its a winner for many courses as the startup cost is only a few k.
 

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