What to do about the customerzilla transcript

By Fiona Boyd |

This blogpost is the transcript of the interview between Fiona Boyd and brand advocate Michel Hogan from Brandology – What to do about the Customerzilla?

Fiona: In one of our last interviews, Michel Hogan from Brandology spoke about the rise of the customer you really don’t want, the Customerzilla. I thought we might talk a bit more about this creature today, so welcome Michel.

Michel: Thanks.Fiona: I listened to a podcast you did with a colleague and a long-time friend of yours from the US, Cindy, whose surname I’ve missed. She’s recently put out a book about customer service and she’s called her book the Rules of Woo. I was quite interested in a lot of things that Cindy had to say, but she also referred to Customerzilla, but she calls it the serial killer customer.

Michel: I love her name for it.

Fiona: Which says that she perceives them as really quite dangerous to your business. And she was saying that they make up about 2% of your customer base at most, but that they’re going to chew up more than 40% of all your time and energy across your whole customer base.

Michel: Exactly.

Fiona: Did you want to elaborate on that, Michel?

Michel: Absolutely.

Fiona: …of how Customerzilla…

Michel: …eats up your time, yeah…Customerzillas – and – Cindy’s surname is Solomon, she’s actually a long time customer service, customer loyalty consultant in the US, works with a lot of, everyone from entrepreneurs and start ups all the way up to Fortune companies so this is a topic she knows a fair bit about, and her serial killer analogy is so true because as she said 2%, roughly about 2% will be your serial killers, your Customerzillas, they’ll take up 40% of your time. At the other end of the scale you’ll have your 2% that are your fans, your true fans, your dream clients, your evangelists, the ones that go out there and talk to everybody, and you know, tell everyone about you. In the middle is the rest, the 96% who are your day to day bread to butter, who keep coming back, who buy your services, who really never demand anything of you, who are generally pretty happy with what you’re doing, and they’re the ones, they are the casualty, actually, of the Customerzilla. They’re the ones that get shortchanged because you’re so busy trying to make these people who will never be happy, happy. And it’s actually, it’s a spiral, and I think Cindy’s name is very appropriate because serial killers are toxic to your business, absolutely toxic…

Fiona:..your community, I mean, those people, that’s your community of interest.

Michel: Yeah…

Fiona: And they are toxic to that, because those people can no longer get attention because the Customerzillas have got it all…

Michel: …have got it all, and, and, the thing is, it’s not just toxic to that community, it’s toxic to the internal community of the organisation, because when you’re constantly dealing with the squeaky wheel, with the people that can’t be made happy, you start to question the very fabric of what you’re doing, and whether you’re doing it well or not…and, well, we must be doing it wrong, because this person’s never happy.

Fiona: Was it a good mission to start with?

Customerzillas can be your business's worst nightmare - take action, walk them carefully to the competition.

Michel: Yeah, we’re delivering what we said we were going to deliver and it’s still not good enough. And there’s a cycle of things that does tend to feed into this. And we’ll talk a bit later about setting expectations. But I think that if you are going to minimise your Customerzillas, having really strong customer expectations upfront, setting them and communicating them really well is key, but the piece that I like what Cindy talks about, with the Customerzilla or the serial killer, and she uses the terminology that you need to lovingly put your arms around their shoulders and walk them to the competition. And let them be their serial killer. And I love that terminology, because there’s an inherent guide in that, it’s not just, drop kick them to the competition, it’s not boot them out of your organisation and create an enemy in the process, it’s that you lovingly take them there because the one thing that you don’t want to do is end up with a really really viciously annoyed customer who will badmouth you to kingdom come. They may well do that anyway. But I think it behoves you to perhaps do everything you can to avoid that situation.

Fiona: There is a it of a belief that, and this has been going around, well a couple of decades, that if you exceed customer expectations that somehow you can win the difficult customer over. And maybe you can win the difficult customer over because they sit within the larger group of customers. But can you win the Customerzilla over?

Michel: Never. Never. They’ll never be happy. It won’t matter what you do, it won’t matter how often you do it, you could do everything perfectly. And in a conversation I’ve had with a friend who runs a retail store in, you know, in country Victoria, actually. And she talks, we were having a conversation about this very thing, these people, you could do it perfectly. To the letter, to the absolute nth degree and they will still find something to be unhappy with, every single time. And it’s just, for whatever reason these people are just not, you can’t please them, you can’t please them and it’s a matter of understanding and recognising them really early on, you know, put in whatever warning systems you need so that you can pinpoint who these people are and start thinking about what strategies you can employ to lovingly get them out of your business. And you can’t, you know, you can’t make them feel bad about you in the process. It may be unavoidable. Downstream, it may be unavoidable.

Fiona: And Cindy does mention this…

Michel: …yeah…

Fiona: ..that they are toxic, and they will badmouth your business no matter what, so in a sense it is better to identify them at some point and to have that strategy to walk them somewhere else.

Michel: Yeah…

Fiona: Do other customers actually listen to Customerzillas? Do they have the power to damage your brand? Or do other customers end up seeing them in a similar way that the company does?

Michel: I think the answer, well, I think the answer to that question is twofold. One, what is the other customer’s experience with you? So, Cindy used the, Cindy and I had a little laugh when we were doing our interview, because we talked about United Airlines. And United Airlines has a, by most people’s take, a well-deserved reputation, um, for, and Cindy laughed…I think I’d been one of those Customerzillas, for them, who they’d wanted to walk to the competion. Uh, because I’m always complaining and I’m never happy. And I said, it’s interesting because my experience with United, and I know there’s some stories out there, but I’ve never personally experienced it, and so, does the fact that I know there’s a lot of angst and a lot of anger and a lot of bad feeling about United out there impact my decision? No, because I haven’t had that experience. So I think the overall impact of them is potentially not as dramatic as people think…

Fiona: …it might be interesting, what they have to say, but at the end of the day, your next purchasing decision, you’re going to reflect back on your experience.

Michel: Exactly. Now if it’s my first decision, if I’ve never bought from you before, if I’ve never transacted with you as a company before and now I am looking for a frame of reference, that’s a different situation, because that is when your Customerzillas can potentially have – especially if they’re vocal Customerzillas, that’s where they can start to have an impact.

Fiona: Just quickly, let’s just wrap up with, exactly what do you do again when you think you’ve got a Customerzilla on your hands? What’s the best way to neutralise this creature?

Michel: Well, that’s such a hard question because for every single company it’s going to be different…

Fiona: …identify them first…

Michel: It’s going to be different. You’ve got to identify what makes a Customerzilla for you, as an organisation, because everyone’s Customerzillas will be different. So identify what is a customer – and look for, how much time are they taking up? You know, how much nurturing, care and feeding are they requiring in relationship to the value that we’re getting from them as a customer. You know, they may be a pain in the butt to deal with, but they’ve bought you a hundred other customers…

Fiona: …oh, I think that’s just a difficult customer…

Michel: Yeah, OK, I would potentially see that as just a difficult customer, but you know, look at how much time they’re chewing up, what sort of energy they’re chewing up, what sort of impact they’re having on the internal morale of the organisation. You know, when all of those things start to show indicators, you know, you’ve probably got a Customerzilla on your hands.

Fiona: And at that point, as much as possible, you wrap your…

Michel: …arms around them…

Fiona: …arms around their shoulders and walk them lovingly to the door…

Michel: Yeah, and you figure out a way to do that, that defends your reputation, and by and large stays true to your brand and what you’re about.

Fiona: Thanks Michel.

Michel: No worries, Fiona.

Fiona: I’ve been speaking today with Michel Hogan, principal and founder of Brandology.

Photo: flickr MonsterPhotoISO

Michel Hogan writes a weekly column on Smart Company called Brand Matters. You can contact her through her business, Brandology.

Niche Content Millionaire is a downloadable eBook that tells you the true story how we made millions from subscription content and membership websites.

Buy Niche Content Millionaire Now