And y’see, I get in trouble when I warn them about the exact opposite. No pleasing some people!
I’ve heard it as 20/80.
Many moons ago, I worked for a small company. A larger company in the area decided to ‘fire’ 20% of their customers because they noticed that 20% of the customers made for 80% of the work while providing, at most, 20% of the revenue. Since they couldn’t ask their employees to not work so hard/diligently on some customers, they fully embraced the 20/80 rule.
The owner of my company was ecstatic…how stupid could the business be!? He greedily took up as many of these ex customers as possible.
Believe me, the other company had it right. I never met such demanding, penny pinching, get as much out of you plus more group in my life at one time. The other company was much better off having us dealing with them then if they were.
Years ago I was a receptionist at a small electronic repair/ secondhand shop. A guy wanted to buy one of the secondhand VCRs that was priced at $350. He offered $200. He was yelling “I’ve got cash, I’ve got cash” & waved the money so close to me that it did brush my nose.
For some reason customers think if you offer money, that will make a businessman swallow a loss.
Sure, the customer is right, until he becomes such a pain in the ass that he magically ceases to be a customer and transmogrifies into a card-carrying asshole who gets told to take his questionable business elsewhere.
I’ve always heard of it as 80/20 or 20/80 as well. While it’s not an exact number, the basic principle is that a small percentage of customers (or just people in general) will cause most of the problems. In a retail business, these customers can actually cost the company money, by wanting returns or adjustments that they’re not entitled to, or by doing things like using or wearing an item and then wanting a full refund. When I was working at a clothing store, we’d sometimes have women who’d buy a fancy outfit, and then bring it back in the next week or so, wanting a full refund/exchange. Some of these returns were legitimate, either the woman had worn something else or she hadn’t gone to the event at all. But many were simply because a woman had worn the outfit to her special occasion, and then she wanted her money back (or rather, get some store credit). The manager finally just declared that all sales on special occasion garments were final. This absolutely enraged the worst offenders, because they knew that this policy was aimed at stopping their abuse of the return policy. Some swore that they’d never shop at our store again. We always had to bite our tongues, because we were tempted to ask “Is that a promise I can hold you to?” and then there would be Letters To Headquarters.
The manager also had a “no returns” policy for the week before and after Halloween, because a lot of kids thought that they could get a free costume at our store.
Some customers really have absolutely no idea how much items cost, or think that items magically appear on the shelves without cost to the business. And other customers are not offering to haggle so much as they are trying to bribe the clerk to help them steal from the store when they offer cash. Other customers don’t see why a shop should try to make a profit when it sells merchandise.
I have a sister-in-law who’s worked in clothing stores for years, including a number of large department stores, and has run into all kinds of these cases. She busted quite a few whose “never worn” special occasions clothing came back with relatively fresh stains, deodorant marks, the occasional “Hello my name is” sticker misplaced inside a jacket, and in at least one case, tailored alterations. In some of these cases she just had to insist that they had it dry-cleaned and returned looking like new, but in others the customer was out of luck. There were also plenty of people abusing the return policy by trying to return clothing which wasn’t durable (when it really had been used for years and was obviously very worn), cleaning out closets and returning clothing owned by deceased relatives that still had the tags on (but had been hanging in those closets for many years, to the point where some no longer had info in the database), and so on.
One of her more frustrating “customers” was a woman who’d come into her store (at the time, she was working at a chain store specializing in clothing aimed at women age 40+) within a half hour before closing time. This woman would keep everyone there well past closing time, doing a lot of trying on and matching outfits and things. She would buy hundreds or even thousands of dollars worth of clothing at a pop, and since this wasn’t that high-end of a shop, this represented a fair amount of clothing bought at once. Not so terrible, right? Wrong.
She’d also buy clothing via the website. And this store had returns via your local store, not shipping back. So IIRC every few weeks, she’d come back to the store with lots of unworn clothing, tags still on and the online-purchased items would often still be in the sealed bags. And she’d return it all there, taking up a ton of time (and hogging a register) with the returns process, and causing a big minus against that store’s weekly totals. My sister-in-law was that store’s manager, so after consulting with higher-ups, she was able to write a letter to this customer which essentially “fired” her and said they didn’t want her to return, but in politer language something like, “We regret that we are unable to provide you with service and merchandise that meets your standards,” and making it clear that she would not be sold clothing in the future.
I think she did keep some clothing, but I don’t know what was up with her otherwise. Selling stuff on eBay in bulk and returning what didn’t sell at a profit, compulsive shopper who found more excitement from buying rather than keeping, whatever, but she made those workers’ days unhappy until she was booted out.
Oh, crazy customer? I’ve got that.
Woo, that was a fun trip down memory lane.
I just read the other thread… and was left most unsatisfactorily hanging! What happened on Monday???
Just watch an episode of Pawn Stars. Someone will bring in something they don’t know how to handle, they’ll bring in an expert who says that it is worth $1,000, and then the seller will demand $1,000. They’re pretty good about shooting down people on that and explaining that they have to make a profit on things, but there are still people who will walk out the door refusing to accept anything less than full value - even when they had no idea what that “full value” was before they walked in the door.
Fig leaf!
I wrote an e-mail to my General Manager stating very explicitly why I refused to work in an office that would have that lunatic as a customer. I think it was the most assertive I’ve ever been in my life.
And my boss said, ‘‘Regardless of what upper management says, I promise you this man will never come into this branch office again. His behavior was completely unacceptable and for no reason should you ever be put in a position where you feel unsafe.’’ We had him permanently removed from the security list and that was that, though I admit I was watching my back for a few weeks when I left the secured part of the building. I’m not sure if his account was maintained via telephone or canceled or what, but I do know he was banned from our branch office. The weird thing is, we weren’t even his primary center.
That was just over a year ago. I don’t work there anymore (went back to school.)
I do tech support for an insurance company that has an online “My Account” thing that lets you check your coverages and claims and stuff. I think about 80% of my customer calls are for password resets.
I got a call about a month ago from a customer who was pissed off because “The Germans” keep changing his password.
Me: The … Germans?
Him: Yeah, you know, the Germans!
Me: I’m sorry, which Germans?
Him: Obviously your parents never fought in World War II!
I reset his password and he was able to log in again. He promised to call back the next time “The Germans” change his password. I haven’t heard back yet.
Heh, the Germans should have changed their own passwords more frequently during World War II.