Should you ever “FIRE” a detail customer?

It sounds preposterous, ludicrous, nonsensical, and absurd to ever “fire” a customer. In this economy? In these turbulent times? But, am I really crazy? Hear me out and read on.  Yes, sometimes the best thing to do is weed out customers who are draining on your profits, morale and time. I have been doing this for years. When I first started detailing I wanted every car and every customer. I was afraid to let a job go for all the obvious reasons.

I am sure many of you have customers who are draining. They may always want discounts. They may be very picky about everything but are unwilling to pay a premium price for high expectations. They may want such things as a loaner car while theirs is being worked on. They may want odd time appointments and request or demand that the car be done at an exact time. They may be unrealistic on how the vehicle should turn out even “after” you point out things that cannot be corrected. They also may want the challenging and more involved operations such as wet sanding, headlight restoration and paint touch ups for instance, included with the regular price. I could go on and on but I am sure we all have these customers. The difference sometimes is that the demanding customers may be problematic sometimes, but some are more than willing to pay the premium price for their expectations. Those are the ones I keep but kind of cringe when they call. The ones who seem like they are never pleased or perceive that they are not getting value for your work…..yes, should be fired!

Cutting ties

Those that expect the most and want to pay the least should be considered a bad investment and may have to be let go. By doing this, it may very well free you up to pursue new customers and pamper some of the better ones. These new ones can be “trained” by you to be a great detail customer. You see, all of us have problems with cancellations, expectations, and pricing. We all have made some of these mistakes at some point. We all have booked a job at too low of a price just to get it. We all have given some customers much more than the job deserved, and we all have put up with un-needed cancellations based on weather or a sudden change in the customers’ schedule. How many times has a customer cancelled an appointment because it “may” rain that day or the next day?

That was one of my pet peeves. I have a shop where work is done indoors, so obviously the weather won’t affect the work being done. Rain will NOT make the car look like it was NOT detailed if it happens to rain the next day. But customers want to enjoy the detail job for many days and not have it rain on the car so they become weather forecasters and cancel appointments based on the potential for some rain. Well, if a customer does this to me once….I book the next appointment about 3 weeks later no matter what. If they do it twice…..they are fired! That pissed me off more than anything. If you cancel a doctor’s appointment within 24 hours, many will still charge you. That prevents cancellations. But, back to training the NEW customers.

Once you have had experience with problem customers you can turn new ones into trained puppies! I tell them you may need the car the entire day. I tell them up front I don’t appreciate cancellations based on weather. I carefully explain how well the car will look no matter what and a little rain will just wash off the dust and the car will look great after the rain stops. There is no need to cancel because it may rain the next day. I inform a customer that YES; there is sales tax on a detail job. I make sure they know what will be taken care of and what cant be taken care of, as well as, what may be optional for an extra charge so we are both on the same page. I always “read” the customer on what they expect and how anal they are. If they are very particular and very anal, that’s fine. But then they will pay for that. Some customers already know how they are. The ones that don’t and still want a deal are the ones you should not take on in the first place. But this is a tough thing to learn

My buddy “Joe”

I talked about my buddy “Joe the detailer” in a previous blog. “Joe” is mobile and likes to get every job he can. The problem with being mobile is that he never gets a chance to see a car before booking an appointment. A customer called him last week and wanted to set something up. The customer seemed a bit anal over the phone as he was asking what processes “Joe” uses and that he needed the car to be “wheeled”. When he asked “Joe” what kind of products he used, “Joe” replied that he uses only the best. I use Optimum. I always appreciate that when “Joe” talks about the Optimum products. So the customer says that his “old” detailer was the best and that he used Optimum and helped develop some of the products. So “Joe” says to this customer, you must be talking about Kevin from Kleen Car. The customer says yes, Kevin used to do my cars for years but now he is too busy training guys and working for BMW of North America so he cant do my car anymore…..You see, this is partly true. I use that line when I need to “fire” a customer or I just don’t want to work on their cars anymore. This guy was a very nice guy and I actually like him. We always chat a bunch when I picked up his car and when I dropped it off. Sometimes too much chatting but that’s my fault as much as anything. In any event this guy is picky but I knew it from the beginning. He would sometimes question things that I had told him would not come out such as deep scratches or chips, etc. before I started the job. I would carefully explain all this and he sometimes would still want to know why they didn’t come out better when the job was done. This is always a pain in dealing with a customer but it has to be re-enforced to them or they will drive you crazy. Eventually the guy purchased a new car and I had told him how to take care of it and he didn’t call me for a while. I did get busier training and such, so I really didn’t have too much time to dedicate to him as he needed pick up at his job which was a bit far for me and all the chatting, and I never really charged him that much so it made sense for me not to do his cars anymore. No hard feelings that he called “Joe”

“Joe” tried to go over the car with him before the detail and he told him what would come out and what would not come out well. From what he told me he charged him a fair price for the car but the slight “issues” that were discussed “before” the job came up again “after” the job. I knew exactly what he meant. Again, we have all come across customers like this. It’s not so bad to have a picky customer. Sometimes that makes us work that much harder and keeps us on our toes. But when the expectations go beyond time involved and price, it’s not fair. These will be the customers that will make you cringe and wish you never had them in the first place. So “Joe” called me after the job to let me know what I already knew about this customer. In the end he was happy but it seemed a little stressful. These situations have to make you think about either raising his price to make sure you can thoroughly take care of all the little issues, or sometimes you should just let them go.

Rule of thumb to let them go

If a customer is late paying that’s a big problem. We all want to be paid for any job and to float money is just bad business most of the time. If a customer is constantly canceling and making you reschedule him, or other people to fit him in, that’s a big problem. If a customer wants to pay the least but expects the most, that a big problem. If a customer is very high maintenance, pushes boundaries and takes up your personal time with unreasonable requests, that’s a big problem. And if you cringe when that customer calls and possibly causes you to lose sleep the night before the job, that’s also a big problem. What can be done about all these problems? Fire the customer!!

It sounds so bad and looks bad to read on this screen, but sometimes this is actually a smart business decision when you think about it. But a smart thing to do is screen new customers better and train them to be good customers. It’s not so hard. You may not get everyone but you should know your target market and concentrate on those people. I know that each one of you while reading this has thought of a few customers that you would like to fire! Even if you don’t fire them, try to “train” them to be better customers.

To visit our detailing website servicing Alpine NJ and surrounding areas, please visit www.njautodetail.com or our training, products and equipment site at www.kleencarauto.com