Heed to the early warning signs of problem customers

Indian passengers are indeed profitable and, therefore, the airline management needs to ensure that they are taken care of.

We all have experienced it. We all have wished for their disappearance. We all wanted someone else to have them. I am talking about those customers who are always troublesome – for no fault of ours. These folks are not easy to please and are never satisfied. They are impatient, short-tempered and highly demanding.

Many of the foreign airlines classify Indian passengers from India into this group. The cabin crew selects Indian cities as the last choice. This set of customers demands so much, when the main job of airline hostesses is to ensure passenger safety, and everything else is extra from the airlines, according to the airline industry experts.

How do we manage tough customers and keep them satisfied while ensuring that our employees are also happy? Indian passengers are indeed profitable and, therefore, the airline management needs to ensure that they are taken care of. One of the reasons for Emirates Airlines to grab the highest market share of this segment is about their smart service standards. I recall what the Emirates CEO had told his frontline staff a few years ago: India is one of our most profitable sectors and you better pull up and serve the routes if you want to retain your jobs!

How can we know a problem customer in the B2B sector? What are the early warning signs? How do we deal with such customers? There are some common signals we have seen across various service businesses. Here are some of these signs and tips for managing such customers.

#1. Payment Delays. A headache customer (or client) will not want to fully pay us for the services we have provided. They will find a million excuses as to why they are delaying payments. (We were lucky in the sense we have had only one customer in our entire working experience as a consulting firm). These customers sometimes delay the payments by as long as 400 days! Sometimes it might be a genuine cash flow issue in which case one can accommodate the request to some extent.

For all the customers where we see this sign of delays in payments, we immediately stop delivering further services. We need to be strict with our collection plans and hold the payment deadlines dear to both. A good practice is to take an advance payment to get our initial work costs covered and to commit the client to the contracted work terms. Firms that offer software support service, training workshops and consulting where there is no physical transfer of products, it will be very useful to get full or at least 50% as advance payments from such customers.

Else, you risk them walking away with your service. All you need to do is to establish an advance payment policy and then hold the client to it. Do not provide them with the service unless they pay.

#2. Presence of conflicts. Some clients we deal with are difficult from day 1. We spot them easily when in the initial meetings they show a streak of impatience or a short fuse in the meeting. They also tend to interrupt us before we complete our presentation. Another sign of conflict is when the client starts getting really demanding.

The client I was referring to earlier started demanding much more than the contracted scope of work. This put a lot of pressure on our people as the client was setting unrealistic expectations. They were also demanding work for building competencies of their key people. Remember that we are in control here and the client needs to conform to our time constraints along with our limitations. We need to be upfront with such clients from the start.

#3. Signed Agreements. We must always have signed contracts in the service business. Since problem clients can get demanding, it helps to get contracts and deliverables clearly written. You want to hold the clients to the agreement and make sure they are not asking for things that are not in the agreement. It is much more manageable when a customer demands something that are not part of the agreement.

#4. Spreading Risk.
It is better to have several clients than one big one. Yes, a big client helps us get big revenues but then they can also kill us by dropping us suddenly. What if the one big client becomes the trouble customer? It is best to spread your risks. This is what they talk about in putting eggs in one basket. Get out there and hunt for additional clients and find the right types of revenue you need for your business.

#5. Emotional Hassles. We have noticed that a troubled client will get under our skin and can cause our blood pressure to rise in a jiffy. When we deal with difficult people, we need to keep our emotions in control. We must remain calm and take a deep-breathing exercise if they act bossy. It will be nice to remind them that we are in control and get them to reason. When they say something offensive or rude, we need to remain calm and ask them to speak professionally if their language is getting out of control.