The customer threshold: learn to avoid your client's breaking point

Custom Home, Sept-Oct, 2002 by Carol Smith

"And now they won't return my phone calls. They are just impossible to please. Talk about the customer from hell! Where do they all come from? What should I do?"

Any customer can become the customer from hell. Difficult customers actually come in two versions: the innately difficult customer and the situationally difficult customer. Innately difficult customers were born difficult. They are difficult all the time with everyone under all circumstances. They do not like living and they don't want anyone else to like it either. They enjoy being difficult.

Situationally difficult customers are created by broken promises, honest mistakes, unreturned phone calls, unanswered questions, and other sloppy business practices. The customer is basically a mentally healthy, well-adjusted, and easy-to-get-along-with human being. You have managed to drive that customer over his or her threshold.

Every customer has a threshold. A threshold is the point at which trust, respect, and goodwill are irrevocably lost. This customer has viewed the evidence and concluded your company is incompetent, dishonest, or greedy. Note these evaluations are founded in character rather than product, process, or service. Based on judgments about your ability and integrity, these condemnations are personal.

How can you recognize that your customers have crossed their threshold? Customers seldom say, "You have breached my threshold and my trust, respect, and goodwill are henceforth unavailable to you." They may say, "I've reached my limit with you people" or simply, "I've had enough." More often, behavior is the clue. A customer who fails to return your phone calls or respond to any form of communication has crossed his threshold. A customer who refuses to allow anyone from your company into her home has certainly crossed her threshold. And one who hires a hot air balloon to drop leaflets saying what a bad builder you are to the people below has definitely crossed the threshold.

The problem is, you don't know until it's too late exactly where each customer's threshold is or what event will push them over it. For one customer, the crossing comes the eighth time your company is unreliable--you are late again with paper work or information, fail to follow through on a promised correction, or deliver the wrong cabinet door a third time. For another, it arrives the second time you make a mistake in arithmetic--in your favor--on a change order.

Customer thresholds are the product of years of consumer experience. As transaction after transaction accumulates in memory, customers begin to suspect and later to know that there is a limit to what they will tolerate. On the surface, you might think that buyers who have had many poor experiences would be more tolerant of your missteps because they know that few companies can get it all right.

You might further believe that customers who have had several excellent experiences would be less tolerant because they still have high expectations. Not necessarily. Poor experiences may have created a raw nerve for the former customer. And the latter may decide it was about time to encounter some problems, assuming they were lucky in the past.

The exact location of each customer's threshold is also influenced by other life events. A happily married customer who was just promoted at work is likely to have more compassion for your screw-ups than the lonely customer who is in a dead-end job. In the end, only the customer knows where the threshold is and when he or she will arrive there.

Once a company pushes a customer past his threshold, cooperation, understanding, and patience are no longer available from that customer. Disillusioned, the customer simply knows you cannot do anything correctly or reliably. The healthy phase of the relationship is essentially over.

Resigned to this fact, the customer may attempt to terminate the contract. If it's too late for that, every contact will be fraught with hostility and mistrust. The smallest events will trigger tirades, threats, and increasingly adversarial postures. Every suggested solution to any problem, no matter how minor, will be received with negativity and obstacles will be thrown up at every opportunity.

Clearly no builder wants this type of relationship with a customer. But if the location of each buyer's threshold is different and if the threshold is invisible until it's been crossed, what can a builder do to avoid this disaster? Follow four simple steps:

1. EXAMINE YOURSELF. The builder who asked the questions that began this column needs to back off criticizing the customer and begin by examining his own performance. By developing the habit of self-evaluation as a first step in untangling customer dilemmas, organizations hold themselves accountable. When you take responsibility for your own actions and relationships, you release energy for improvement and growth.

2. TAKE RESPONSIBILITY. Acknowledging your responsibility calmly and promptly to the customer provides a large measure of safety from the dreaded threshold. This respite is temporary, however, unless followed by decisive action to correct the situation.