Every time I lose (get rid of?) a customer, I feel a need to blog about it, kind of like a confession, because it’s never nice a pleasant task. So far we’ve had a good run, a few customers who came on at the beginning and who didn’t fit our business any more, one man who embarked on a web project without any idea of what he was doing and completely unreasonable expectations, one massively dis-organised project back in the earlier days that was largely our fault (we did however offer a massive discount) and not a huge amount else. But these guys were just unpleasant.

The Yeller

This customer felt like it was ok to ring me constantly and yell down the phone line. This started when we started having server troubles, which is a nightmare for any web company. However, I did everything I could to sorted, we had me and at least one other person basically full time getting people off the server and keeping it ticking along. Often this was in the middle of the night and well outside of work hours. However, every time one of them called, I accepted full responsibility, told them we were doing everything we could and were aware of the problem and they would be back on track within 10 minutes.

I started to get the impression they just enjoyed yelling at me (this was two separate people within one company)

Then we fixed the server and there were no more problems, so every time their internet connection didn’t work, they STILL called me yelling down the phone, if I didn’t pick up, I checked my messages only to get an ear bashing. It didn’t matter that I’d been totally honest all along especially when it was our fault and that I explained numerous times that now we were accessing their email just fine, they still yelled.

I HATE it when people yell at me. I think I have reached my limit of being yelled at over the past few years and think there is no place for it in business. What do they think? Because they are giving me an ear bashing, I’ll forget all my polite, respectful customers and sort their problems first? I just find it a rude, unpleasant and unnecessary way of dealing with other people. So I told them to go somewhere else (I was actually very polite and just said that I don’t think it was working, they were clearly unhappy and it was probably best for all of us if they went somewhere else).

I thought I’d feel bad, but actually I feel very relieved.

It was kind of funny to contrast it with our hosting company at the time. They were also on standby all the time and helped numerous times trying to sort it out. Even when I was getting an ear bashing, our relationship with our hosting company remained friendly and helpful. I knew they were doing everything they could, they knew I was doing everything I could and we got it sorted. I could have yelled at them, they could have yelled at me, we could have sat there yelling at each other for two weeks straight, but instead we just calmly sorted the problem.