How should our company "let go" of unsavory customers? By this, I mean the rude customers who scream at our call center agents or continually call about non-issues. When and how should we coach agents on "giving up," so to speak, on customers who aren't worth the customer service we offer them?
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Assuming these customers are indeed complaining about "non-issues" and they are in the wrong, there are certain ways to handle them. Sometimes, rude customers consume disproportionate resources to their level of business. In these cases I'd recommended trying to push them to the competition. In other cases, you can "tag" them in the customer database and notify them that from now on they can communicate with the organization via email or fax, but you will not take calls from them. In extreme cases, if the customer is using profanity, it should be a trigger for your call center agents to say, "Please contact us when you can speak in a respectable manner; we will now end the conversation."
Notify the customer that you plan to reevaluate the situation after three to six months and may accept their calls back in the call center.if the situation has improved. In this way, some customers will "shape up" and others will naturally "shape out" to the competition.
This was first published in March 2007