10 Easy Ways to Lose a Customer

Posted by: J. R. Lenz [Views: 324]
Wednesday, February 27, 2008 9:59:02 am UTC

This blog entry is compiled out of the pure and utter distaste I harbor towards the poor customer service I have encountered over the past several years.  This is dedicated especially to employees in Iloilo City, but no locality is exempt.

How to lose your customers and guarantee they won't come back in 10 easy steps:

1. Don't use the innate capacity for logic given to Every Human Being.  You are simply there to do your job as outlined in every detail by your superior.  There is no room for thinking in the workplace.
   
   
2. Show your customers false respect and false pleasure in serving them.  Customers don't provide your employer with money, thus allowing for your salary to be paid.  Also, customers are too stupid to tell when an employee is being fake.
   
   
3. When a customer asks to speak to your superior, make up some bogus excuse.  An angry customer never has a good reason to speak to the manager, and will not be even more angry when he/she finally does speak to the manager, because customers can't find a manager with your help.
   
   
4. If a customer asks for a certain product, tell them it's not available.  This goes especially for food-service companies.  The customer will always be happy to find another product, even after his/her first three choices were not available.
   
   
5. Always refuse to help a customer with a defective/faulty product obtain a refund/discount.  Once a customer buys something they're stuck with it and it's too bad for them.  This especially goes for utilities (phone/electric/Internet) that take customers' money but provide substandard service.
   
   
6. Make customers wait a disproportionate amount of time for their problems to be solved.  Customers' time is not important to them, and they like nothing better than to waste their time waiting for you to solve problems with your product/service.
   
   
7. Understaff your place of business.  Customers always love waiting in long lines at the checkout counter.  It's best to leave at least 50% of your registers closed, even during times when there are at least 5 customers in each line.
   
   
8. Don't train your employees, they magically know everything about your company.  In the event of special promotions, your employees can always send the customer searching through your store, trying to find the one employee in the store who knows about a particular promotion.
   
   
9. When a customer asks where he/she can find a product, just point somewhere in the general direction and return immediately to whatever you were doing.  Customers love spending 20 minutes looking for a product, especially in large stores.  They find this to be intellectually and sometimes physically challenging; all in all, a good workout.
   
   
10. Talk to your co-workers about foreigners in your own language.  There's no way that customers will ever understand you, because they don't understand your language.  Besides, they love being insulted while spending their money in your country and contributing to your economy.
    

Any of the above, alone or in combination, should be enough to guarantee that you will lose a customer forever.  After all, we all hate customers, don't we?  We love the thought of being unemployed when our employers go out of business.