In my early career, I never thought I could fire a customer. I felt like if a customer wanted to be a customer, I should let them. However, I have changed my opinion over the years. Now, I believe that the customer relationship goes both ways and customers that aren’t treating your organization or employees well should get sacked.

In my global Customer Experience consultancy, I have refused to work with some organizations.  I skipped their project because I didn’t feel like they were serious, and, in my experience, if an organization isn’t serious about their Customer Experience program, then it won’t be successful. I didn’t want my organization to be associated with a failure that was because of lack of commitment to the concept.

We discussed firing customers in a recent podcast. I was inspired by Frederick Reichheld’s article, “Firing a Bad Customer in 2021.” Reichheld is the author of many books on customer loyalty and invented the Net Promoter Score (NPS). Reichheld believes that taking feedback from the wrong customers makes frontline employees feel more alienated from the system of the NPS. Your frontline employees, Reichheld argues, should be empowered to choose the customers from whom they receive feedback.

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