anyone ever have a customer who will send you 11 email within an hour if you didn't reply their first email?

i havn't come across a customer who is so demanding until today. he literaly send me 11 email within one hour because i didn't reply.

it's not that i don't want to reply but SBC change rule or something that cause me to recieve email but not sending it out. it turn out in order to use outlook to send email. i need to use SBC smtp server instead of my own email server at DC. it take me a while to find this out since SBC tech doesn't really have a clue or at least the one i talk to. until i start google this topic and come across several thread talking about Verzion DSL with outlook problem and it turn out SBC did the same thing as Verzion did. both of them require you to use their smtp as outgoing.

it never happened before i guess they change it to avoid spam or something

anyway. watch out guy if your customer keep email you and you can't send email for reply. it may be your ISP is blocking port 25 or require you to use their smtp as outgoing server in outlook or any other email client.

Yes, just give them the flick if it continues.

Good reason to tell clients to use the help desk instead of email.

if he's a customer, you should have his/her contact information.

Fly above the rest and call him/her up, apologize for not returning his email (don't make excuses) but just indicate that there is a slight issue being resolved, and help him over the phone.

good for brownie points

I tend to be quite confrontational but I think bitfuzzy views are what we should strive to do.

Yes. I have had to let customers go because they are simply too whacko. We use a help desk system and this one customer of ours would open 6 or 7 tickets about the same issue within a 1 hour span. We asked them to open only 1 ticket and be patient, but they somehow thought that we would answer more quickly if they opened 7 tickets.

Finally let them go after a couple of months of this non-sense.

Originally posted by bear
Good reason to tell clients to use the help desk instead of email.

Then they will reply 11 times to the ticket instead.

Originally posted by bitfuzzy
if he's a customer, you should have his/her contact information.

Fly above the rest and call him/her up, apologize for not returning his email (don't make excuses) but just indicate that there is a slight issue being resolved, and help him over the phone.

good for brownie points

Theirs customers that just don't give a damm what you do. We have bent backwards and gone well beyond what we are required to do for some customers to have it thrown back in our faces. I find the more demanding customers are the ones that pay less personally.

[somehow thought that we would answer
more quickly if they opened 7 tickets.]

This is a service based industry. Perhaps if someone had taken the time to give them a call, even just to say, "we're working on your ticket at this moment, but we wanted to make sure you didn't have any further questions." would have helped them relax.

Email especially automated responces are not only impersonal, but it tends to make people wonder exactly when someone will "bother" to look into the problem. Who knows what nightmares they've already experienced before switching to your service.

We've found that by going the extra step, we not only made our life easier, but gain'd customer loyality in the process. That's not saying that we never came across a customer that no matter how far we bent over couldn't be satisified, thus let go, but we know we went every mile before it got to that point.

There ARE some customers you don't want

Originally posted by Brandon_in_ca
There ARE some customers you don't want

yeah some customer you just perfer not to have. i have some people who never need anything from me and only email me once when they have question, not 11 email within an hour.

Originally posted by bitfuzzy
[somehow thought that we would answer
more quickly if they opened 7 tickets.]

This is a service based industry. Perhaps if someone had taken the time to give them a call, even just to say, "we're working on your ticket at this moment, but we wanted to make sure you didn't have any further questions." would have helped them relax.

Email especially automated responces are not only impersonal, but it tends to make people wonder exactly when someone will "bother" to look into the problem. Who knows what nightmares they've already experienced before switching to your service.

We've found that by going the extra step, we not only made our life easier, but gain'd customer loyality in the process. That's not saying that we never came across a customer that no matter how far we bent over couldn't be satisified, thus let go, but we know we went every mile before it got to that point.

I see it the other way actually. My time is very valuable, not only to me but to my customers. I've made it very clear to my customers, and actually have it written in the FAQ, customers that open multiple tickets or send multiple emails will be placed at the bottom of the queue and/or given the option to purchase, yes purchase, technical support services for $60/hour. If they open emergency level tickets for non-emergency issues, they will either have the ticket closed, or given the option to purchase support services. I've even went as far as removing PerlDesk and using a custom developed helpdesk that filters tickets based on the customers hosting package, the more they spend, the higher they are in the ticket system thus the faster the support they receive. I for one won't allow a $10 customer to affect the overall support a $130 hosting customer needs/deserves. Now before you fire off that I'm a bad host, or don't value my customers, think of the other 20 customers that are peacefully waiting in line. Sure his email was down and he COULD have called however, what happens when he is truly overloaded with support requests? The same customer fires off 20 emails again, thus overloading him more and slowing support down. It never stops. The customer just gets even more upset and leaves anyway.

You also have to think of the hosts normal support procedure. Many don't have, nor offer telephone support. Calling the customer would give the impression you offer these services, even if you say you don't (telephone support that is), they will still (if you give them your number) use whatever method to contact you, even for small "what's the webmail address" type questions.

I just don’t have the time to waste on one unreasonable customers when there are 20 others that are calm and truly value my time.

[the more they spend, the higher they are in the ticket system thus the faster the support they receive.]

You're not alone in that method. Microsoft, SCOG, Verisign, etc all use similar techniques in support.

We just don't follow that thought, as to us all customers hold the same importance. Opting instead to focus on nature of complaint and order in which the complaint came in.

"IF" for any reason a smaller customer needs to be side stepped we tend to waive a month fee or make up for it in some other fashon, but unless it's an emergency, it's FIFO (first in , first out)

[Now before you fire off that I'm a bad host, or don't value my customers,]

I'd never presume such a thing ;) everybody handles situations their own way.. actually your post gave me a couple of ideas on how to handle another matter :-D

Originally posted by coight
Then they will reply 11 times to the ticket instead. So? It takes the problem of their not receiving (or just claiming not receiving it) the response out of the loop. If he opens multiple tickets, close them.

"We just don't follow that thought, as to us all customers hold the same importance. Opting instead to focus on nature of complaint and order in which the complaint came in."

I was hired at a company that had two guys spending 10 hours a day answering lost password requests.

I noticed that 99% of the support time was spent servicing customers with less than $10 in their account.

I immediately automated the process for low value accounts (under $100 balance).

Then I suggested that we change our service model to bill for having an account rather than merely billing for the balance. This suggestion was adopted and put the company, which was a startup, from being in the red to being in the black in 30 days.

Strangely, it seems that people with the least invested in your service often waste your time - because they didn't value your service enough to write down the password, read the FAQ, etc.

It is entirely reasonable to analyze your customer service pattern and find a way to charge the people who use your customer service the most frivolously in order to gently encourage them to use the FAQ and use their brain, like responsible customers do.

Continuing that thought, when we identify a customer as a customer service hog, we simply triple the prices for that customer. He either pays, which compensates us for the higher level of service this customer demands, or he moves on to another provider, which is fine.

6 year thread necro. Nice.

Just remember though that the one problem customer will also run his mouth and prevent 10 other good customers from signing up with you. Feel free to send us all of your so called problem customers.

Edit: Sorry I did not see that it was 6 years old. :o

Woahh, an oldie thread but if they're too much of a hassle for you and aren't a very big client for you, just ask them to leave and go else where.