You should pay your customers!

I have been reading my bloglist this morning and came across the “You should pay me…..” post on Businesspundit.

And the question: “How often do you/we things that upset our clients?”, comes to mind. And it often is not really anybodies fault, but just a simple misunderstanding. But then you have companies that really don’t seem to care about clients, apart from getting their hands on the clients money. Businesspundit writes:

[...] It’s been a few months now and I’ve called, emailed, filled out online forms, and I have never reached a live person or received confirmation that my account was shut down, and I still get charged. I finally had to file a dispute through my credit card company. It’s $8.99/month, so they owe me at least $26.97. [...]

These businesses do not understand that they damage their own business not only by reputation, but also financially.
Your customers are very upset and of cause they will talk (or blog) about their experience. And that all for $8.99/month, that is madness.

I’m sure that Businesspundit has cost them far more then $8.99/month for the last three month, by complaining to the staff, who did not care and now by blogging about it, it gets even worth. The best part is that they will have to refund all this money, so this is going to be a real profitable deal.

Cock ups happen, at $8.99/month per customer, you draw a line, and let the customer go with an apology, even if you think you have done nothing wrong. Rather then spending time on getting $8.99, let the customer go now, find out what went wrong, and fix it. If you make your unhappy customer part of this process and offer a month or two free service, for his/her help, you may even be able to retain this customer. Even if you don’t, at least the customer knows you did care.

It is always nice to hear from customers who like your service, but you do not learn anything from a conversation like that, unless your customers come up with the “I love your service, BUT…..” statement, then count yourself lucky. It shows you that your clients care about your business and products or services enough, to wanting to help you.

Don’t ask your clients to sign long term contracts, with notice periods, etc., give them a cancel anytime, no contract needed relationship, it saves you money, overheads, and forces your organization to focus on your clients. If your service or product is any good, it will get even better, and the bottom line will follow by word of mouth, your clients word of mouth.

To cut a long story short, it makes perfect business sense to pay your customers.

Tags: Business Development, Business Mentoring, Business Start Up, Entrepreneur, Home Business, Micro Business, bad business, Selfemployed, Small Business, smb, sme, SOHO, Very Small Business, VSB, WinWeb

One Response to “ You should pay your customers! ”

1. THE SMALL BUSINESS BLOG » Blog Archive » Ask Your Customers.
   
   Said on June 16th, 2006 at 8:53 am

   [...] In a earlier post I said you should pay your clients. This centers around my believe that any organisation should be customer driven, certainly very small business. Getting new customers can be a very time consuming and expensive undertaking. Keeping your current customers happy and finding out what it is they like about your service / product, is paramount. You can talk to them and make notes, sent them a questionnaire, or you could have them vote on aspects of your service / product. [...]

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