Sometimes You Have to Fire a Customer

One of the difficult -- and often ridiculous -- problems which small business owners sometimes face is managing a customer whose requests have gotten out of control. When you are building a business empire, ideally, you want to attend to the needs and concerns of every person who walks through your door or clicks onto your site. However, occasionally, you will stumble across a client who clogs up your customer service lines, eats up your staff’s resources, reacts illogically and emotionally to decisions you make, and otherwise confounds and confuses your other small business customers.

Firing a customer is never easy. But small business owners can use the situation to learn a little bit about human psychology. First of all, try to resolve conflicts with the customer through other means, such as negotiation, warnings, and good-humored suggestions about reform. If these gentle tactics don’t work, figure out a time and a place to drop the customer, and prepare a speech or create a written description of why you want to terminate the relationship.

Be professional and cordial about the arrangement, but don’t bend over backwards to placate or mollify the customer if he becomes ridiculous or unnecessarily angry. If he threatens your small business or otherwise behaves unprofessionally, just walk away. Chances are if he is acting irrationally around you, he likely has little clout among associates and potential customers that you care about.

Once you have done the deed, reward yourself by spending time with customers who care about you or simply by going out to a nice relaxing dinner. While the small business entrepreneur should strive to be everything to everybody, that ideal is often impossible to reach. Moreover, if you have a mind to grow your small business into something bigger, firing a customer will give you some good practice into how to manage tough political situations that crop up in the shark-eat-shark world of multinational corporate politics.

Finally, even though nine times out of ten the rantings of an angry and vindictive customer are those of a dog whose bark is bigger than his bite, you still may need reassurance that the customer won't throw your other business relationships off track. Work with a person or an advisory company you trust to ensure the sanctity of your other professional relationships in the wake of this maneuver.

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