Firing a customer

When you're a small company, you're always on the lookout for revenue. Every customer is critical, and you want to do everything you can to keep every single one.

Up to a point.

One thing I have learned in many years of business is the importance of knowing when to fire a customer.

Ayrstone's customers, by and large, are some of the nicest people I have ever dealt with. It is truly a pleasure to work with them, and I truly feel bad when something doesn't go as it should. We all try to go out of our way to make things right

But, that said, there are always a few people who, for a variety of reasons, you really don't want to do business with, and it's a palpable relief to give them their money back and see them walk away. There have been a few of those over the last year, and I was reminded of them today when we got rid of another one.

This afternoon, just before 1, our support folks got a call from someone who wanted to return the product. The support person explained that we will provide an RMA within a day. This customer called them back half an hour later to ask where the RMA was. In the meantime she had sent us an email asking for the RMA, then another 20 minutes later, and a third thirty minutes after that emphasizing that she had been waiting for 3 DAYS for this.

I have a part-time helper goes through the support notes twice a day and sends RMA numbers as needed, and she responded just before 2 p.m., or about an hour after the first call.

I have seldom been happier to get rid of a customer; I'll be relieved when we refund her money.

Another customer, several months back, called and emailed several times a day over several days to ask questions about the product that were clearly covered in the installation instructions or the FAQ on the website. He decided there must be something wrong with the product, so we did an exchange. When the new product worked exactly the same as the "old" product, he asked what could be done. I told him (ever so sadly) that the only option was a refund, and that we were terribly sorry we couldn't help him.

There are customers who aren't worth having - some are too expensive, and some are just too needy or unpleasant to deal with.

Do you have customers you'd like to fire? Have you fired a customer?

It's a little scary, but a liberating experience.

Are you the kind of customer your vendors want to fire? As Dr. Phil likes to say, "How's that workin' out for you?"

Smarphones and business...

Several years ago I got my first smartphone, a Handspring Treo 650. Already a Palm addict, it was outstanding for me - my Palm Pilot had long ago replaced the calendar (that got left on a train) and contact book that I had carried around for years. I was able to now consolidate from three devicesn (laptop, phone, and PDA) that I had to have with me at all times to two. Once I got a data plan, I was able to get my email on the Treo, so I was actually able to get down to one device a lot of the time.

The Treo had a VGA camera that could shoot video, an easy-to-swap battery, and it could be mated to a Bluetooth keyboard. It also had a good collection of apps available for it, adding terrific enhancements to the included PIM applications (datebk5, goosync), Microsoft Office capability (QuickOffice, Documents To Go), and some nice games. It even had a browser, which, combined with the super-slow dataspeed, was almost worthless.

I went to work for Cisco for a while, which is an "all-Microsoft" shop (at least for the managerial class... it turns out the technical folks have better infrastructure choices), so I was obliged to use the "standard-issue" Windows smartphone, a Samsung Blackjack. The EDGE dataspeed and Internet Explorer were a big improvement on the web experience, but still pretty useless, as was the rest of the phone. I was glad to give that one back to Cisco when I left and actually went back to the Treo.

However, I'm hard on phones, and the Treo had some significant dings that were starting to affect the internal workings of the phone. So, in May, 2009 I got myself an iPhone 3G. This was just after the 3GS was introduced. There wasn't really a lot of info on the 3GS when I made the decision; it had a better camera, which wasn't really a major point for me, and a digital compass. I know which way is which, and I don't take a lot of pictures with my phone, so I got the 3G.

What I didn't know when I got the iPhone was that it didn't:

1.) Shoot video. Better resolution for still shots than the Treo or Blackjack, but no video. Huh??? Of course, the 3GS didn't either until they released an iOS upgrade, which provided video on the 3GS but not the 3G.
2.) Have enough memory. The 3G only has 128 MB of memory, while the 3GS has 256 MB and the 4 has 512 MB. These specs are not widely broadcast by Apple; you have to dig for them, but they have had a HUGE effect on my use of the phone.
3.) Work with a Bluetooth keyboard. This floored me - I never checked; I couldn't conceive that a smartphone wouldn't work with a Bluetooth keyboard. This still strikes me as the most stupid thing Apple has ever done. Worse than Finder 8.x.
4.) Have a good PIM. And they don't allow apps that usefully extend the address book and calendar. I have felt like I had an arm cut off ever since I gave up the Treo... simple, stupid things like being able to have every new calendar entry have a reminder by default just aren't there. I'll set appointments in a hurry and forget to set a reminder. Half an hour after the appointment, I'll look it up and find it there, perfectly happy, never having said a word to me. What's the use?
5.) Be "tetherable." Having a fast internet connection on your phone is fine, but it's even better if you can share it with your laptop when you need to.

Don't get me wrong - the iPhone is an amazing device. Google maps and the "REAL" Safari browser have saved my bacon a few times. Having a GPS is nice, and the multi-touch user interface is terrific. But these things seem like stuff you should have dealt with before putting all the bells and whistles on.

Then there was the problem that the iPhone being inextricably linked (until recently) to AT&T. The radios in the iPhone (all 4? 5? of them - GSM, HSPA, WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS - am I missing any?) are very weak to preserve battery power, so I found I dropped a lot more calls on the iPhone than on the old Treo.

My last interaction with AT&T came just a few months ago, however. I had the unlimited data plan (as all iPhone users did), and AT&T brought out limited data plans. Since I had never used more than 130 MB of data in a month (I mostly use it on WiFi because the 3G data rate is so slow), I signed up for the 200 MB per month plan to save $15.

Several weeks later, I got a text from customer service letting me know I was over my allocation. By about 4 GB.

I called them as soon as I could to explain there was a mistake; I had not changed my usage, I had never used more than 130 MB of data in a month, so this was clearly a mistake. They "opened a case" to investigate, and their "investigation" showed that I had used that much data. I asked them to re-open the case, which they did, and then re-closed it. I went in to the local AT&T store to talk to them in person. They were able to bring up the logs and show me the data usage; apparently, one night my phone downloaded over 4 GB of data in about a 6-hour stint. While I was asleep. And I downloaded even more over the next couple of days.

Now, one of the features of the iPhone is that it keeps track of how much data it "sees" passing through the data connection, and that counter (which I have never reset) shows that I have send just under 500 MB and received 2.4 GB in the life of the phone. I also measured the download speed (several times, over a period of several days) from speedtest.net, and found that, at the speeds I get, it would take the better part of a day to download 4 GB of data, assuming the link was running "full speed" the entire time.

I presented all this evidence to the folks at AT&T, who said, in effect, "We don't care." They generously allowed me to retroactively upgrade to a 2 GB data plan, so I had only a $40 overage. I paid the $40 and vowed that would be the last time I did business with AT&T for cellular service. In May my contract is up, and I'll look at what Verizon can offer.

Now, I had mentioned that the memory capacity of the iPhone has become important. I had "jailbroken" my iPhone to try to overcome some of the limitations - it allowed me to shoot video and tether the phone, both of which were very good. I decided at one point to upgrade to iOS 4.1 to get some new features (including support for the Bluetooth Keyboard), figuring I could easily downgrade and re-jailbreak if needed. When I upgraded to iOS 4.1, the phone was usable, but the apps were almost all unusable. It took up so much memory, it took minutes for apps to load. One day I was looking up something on Google Maps, and, after 10 minutes, I finally just gave up - it didn't crash, it just sat there, not responding. This is something I do a lot of the iPhone, so I needed to get it back. I downgraded back to 3.1.3, and the phone is now usable, but still a lot slower than it used to be. It turns out that upgrading to 4.1 installed new data modem software (the "baseband" software) that, apparently, takes up much more memory than the old software. It also makes it impossible to "jailbreak."

Interestingly, several of my applications had updated to iOS 4.1 versions, and they disappeared when I downgraded. The iOS 3.1 versions apparently are no longer available, so I have just lost them.

So, now my iPhone is obsolete. It still works, but it's not nearly as useful as it was. In May I'll evaluate my options on Verizon. They have the iPhone 4, of course, but now that I have been so thoroughly obsoleted in 2 years with an iPhone, I'm very leery of taking that "closed platform" trip again. An open platform like Android has the advantage that a savvy user can maneuver more to reduce the effects of obsolescence; with Apple, you get what you get.

The point of all this, of course, is that I consider a smartphone a necessity of modern business. Although I have considered it, I'm very reluctant to go back to a 3 or 4-gadget existence - I'd like to keep going down the path of having to have my laptop with me less of the time rather than more. I really appreciate being able to pull out the phone and work productively on email and web-based work (as long as it doesn't involve Adobe Flash - another "closed platform" problem).

Whither next on this journey? I'll let you know...