Severing Customer Ties: The Lesson of Steven Slater

Steven Slater is all over the news. He’s all over social networking sites, he’s all over blogs, he’s everywhere! And whether you love him or hate him, I think we can all sympathize with him a bit on how frustrating it can be when dealing with difficult customers.

Every professional has a constituency of customers, whether they're company employees, other departments, or the more traditional, paying external customers. And unless you’re the luckiest person alive, you’ve had to deal with at least one who drove you crazy. You know, the one who constantly made you doubt yourself and ultimately contemplate telling them off and walking away.

As I heard news snip-its and caught headlines about Slater, I began to wonder, just when is it OK to cut your losses with a customer and simply walk away? What’s the boiling point for an HR practitioner who provides services to an entire organization? When could a business cut ties with a customer and forfeit revenue? When should a department stop supporting and servicing another at the risk of burning a bridge?

The motto in customer service may be “the customer is always right,” but are they always right? If providing service to one customer negatively impacts your ability to provide service to another, is it worth it? If supporting a single client sucks up all your time and energy, should you continue to support them?

What do YOU think? Tell us…

• What’s your breaking point with unruly customers?
• How do you manage difficult client relationships?
• What are your strategies for coping with the ones that drive you crazy?

Comments

[2kmaro]

I think you have to consider the line of work you are into. Do you want a physician, nurse or police officer refusing to assist you because you've been a PITA in the past?
In this case, here we have a person who's supposedly tasked with providing for the safety of the passengers on an aircraft who has just decided that it isn't worth the effort. What if he had copped that attitude after an emergency landing -- do you want to fly with someone you're supposed to be able to depend on who is going to bail on you because suddenly he thinks you're not worth the effort.
He is not a hero - he's a spoiled little boy who couldn't control himself long enough to simply and quietly resign as he should have.