Creating customer satisfaction should be the goal of every dealership. Research suggests that customers who are happy with their service experience will return in the future and refer up to 5 other people to your shop. But most customers who are unhappy will never come back, and they'll tell up to 8 people not to do business with you. So what happens when a customer isn't happy but continues to come back over and over again? Let's face it; some people are just miserable with life. They don't like themselves so they can't possibly be happy with anything you do. You go out of your way to help them and even give things away to try and make them happy, but nothing works. So what's the answer? In some cases, a customer becomes so unreasonable that you have no choice but to fire them. That's right; you need to let them go.

That's because continuing to allow them to do business with you could make things much worse:

Your team's attitude could be affected because they dread working with the customer or on their car.

You could lose more money by trying to appease the customer every time he or she comes in for service. You could also waste a lot of valuable time on this type of customer.

Other customers will overhear the constant complaints by the customer and by your team.

The customer will continue to bad mouth you to other potential customers. This is some of the worst advertising you could ever want.

How to fire a customerCase study

A customer had taken every possible advantage of our service department and our personnel. She had verbally abused almost everyone over the phone and in one case she insisted we send a tow truck to fix an aftermarket alarm system that had locked her out of the car. Not only did we not install it, but she was 50 miles from our dealership at the time. So after she had the vehicle towed in, I invited her into my office: 'Mrs. Smith, I said, 'It appears that regardless of the work we perform on your vehicle, we just can't seem to make you happy. Also, considering how hard my people work to make our customers happy, I refuse to allow anyone to speak to them the way you've spoken to them. And since you are so unhappy with our service, I'd like you to take your vehicle someplace where you feel the service better meets your needs.'

Final outcome

After recovering from the shock of being fired, the customer stormed out of the service manager's office. And while she tried to create some trouble for them with the manufacturer, they brought a final resolution to the situation by buying her out of her car. It was nearly 10 years old at the time, but in the long run they all considered it to be one of the best investments they ever made.

It's always important to offer honest service at a good value. Training your people in customer contact skills and working to make every customer satisfied should always be your objective. But if all that you can do isn't enough, it's often best to part ways with an unhappy customer.

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