Work Matters

Asshole Customers: Insights from 30 Years of Selling

Written by

supermoxie

in

Last week, I asked an experienced salesman which customers are the “assholes”
of his profession.  He had a great
answer: “When I started in the business I am currently in, over 30 years
ago now, a senior sales person heard me call me someone an asshole (I thought I
had only said it to myself just after hanging up on a particularly frustrating
call). He asked me to explain why I used
that term and I did. He then corrected
my usage as in our industry "asshole" had a very specific meaning:  It
should only be used to refer to someone that has negotiated strongly for a particular
line item and then, once it was agreed to, decided that he didn’t want it
anyway.”

I like this little story because, when a customer leaves behind a trail of salespeople who feel spent, de-energized, and
demeaned, he or she qualifies as an asshole in my book. Also note a key nuance: Assholes aren’t always overtly demeaning, some
of the worst of these jerks do their dirty work without uttering an unkind word
and raising their voices – but they leave their victims feeling disrespected, demeaned,
and abused anyway.  Some of the most destructive
assholes entice their victims with smiles, warmth, and compliments, setting the trap before stabbing them in the back.

Comments

One response to “Asshole Customers: Insights from 30 Years of Selling”

  1. Sancho Avatar
    Sancho

    That’s so true!
    I often wonder “am i the asshole” because certain people can be so subtle it’s hard for some people to pick up on if I show them.
    But you’re absolutely right many of them are subtle and the support person can be left feeling demeaned and exhausted and then the employer still has nothing left to show for it in the end cause they usually don’t buy or they end up refunding, costing the employer money in that the employer has to pay the support for dealing with the asshole actually costing the company money.
    Even when they don’t refund they can cost the company more money in the long run than what the customers first and only sale was worth.
    Here’s something else that is true for me personally.
    The assholes are not people who need genuine help, are frustrated and not nice right away (although this can be exhausting too however understanding you try to be after dealing with it 100 times a day every day) or those who ask a couple of questions and try to cooperate.
    Many of the asshole time wasters are the ones who have a dozen questions and every question that is answered raises one or two more questions and after a bunch of correspondence they are the most likely to not buy or if they do the most likely to almost certainly refund later.
    It might sound mean but hey it’s the truth – they are not worth the time and effort.
    Lots of companies especially small ones and home based businesses really need to develop a check list for flagging certain people – it may not be perfect but overall I think they would be better off in the long run.
    I’ve heard it said that the way a business is run should not be left to support but the truth is many business owners don’t know how to run them or at least deal with and be able to spot trouble customers themselves.
    Just because someone owns a business doesn’t necessarily mean they have a lot of knowledge or experience with customers themselves – and they don’t really know what they’re talking about when it comes to knowing how to deal with customers.
    If business owners sat at their own help desks for a week themselves they’d more than likely sing a different tune.
    Lot’s of business people can be naive and think they should go way beyond the call of duty but this is very taxing on financial, physical and emotional resources.
    It’s not easy to make a formula to filter these trouble making people out but some sort of well thought out criteria is worth having and will be dead on way more often than it is wrong.
    It just doesn’t make sense to deal with certain people.
    The Pareto principle definitely applies to customer support, I think.

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