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Various comments on my last post — Don’t Fire the Customer, Fire Yourselves! — showed that many use the phrase “fire the customer” as a display of power.

In the aftermath of abusive customers or the challenge of clients who constantly change their minds, some leaders and business owners use that damaging phrase to validate the organization’s position and use it to re-motivate frustrated and demoralized teams.

Yet, the power playing approach leaves a trail of trouble for the teams, the customer service culture, and the company’s reputation and brand.

Turn Off the Power for Superior Customer Experience!

Power struggles establish the dynamic as right vs. wrong.

Customer experience is about perspective and connection.

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Power words, like “firing”, conquer & crush.

Customer experience is about awareness, empathy, uplift, and success.

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Power-based motivation like “employees first, customers second” sets up a win/lose mentality.

Superior customer experience is about win/win!

“When you lead and serve for power, get ready for a power failure!” There is no greatness in either/or.

Turn off the power struggles, power words, and power-based motivation. If you want to use power, give it to your customers to give you free feedback — communicated with basic respect.

Turn on the listening and learning. Turn on creative exploration for effective problem solving. Turn on innovative thinking for customer satisfaction. Turn on the honest diplomacy to set limits in abusive situations. Turn on the joy of delivering superior customer service.


Lead a culture of excellence for improved performance based in continuous learning — not in power.

How will you ignite the customer service greatness in your organization?

I welcome your perspective in the comments section below. And I am ready to help you the way I have helped countless others in the last 23 years.


From my professional experience to your success,
Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach™

Related Posts:
Leadership success: Think Balance Beam Not Mountain Top
Super Customer Experience: Customers & Us in Harmony

©2012 Kate Nasser, CAS, Inc. Somerville, NJ. I appreciate your sharing the link to this post on your social streams. However, if you want to re-post or republish the content of this post, please email info@katenasser.com. Thank you for respecting intellectual capital.

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Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach™, delivers coaching, consulting, training, and keynotes on leading change, employee engagement, teamwork, and delivering the ultimate customer service. She turns interaction obstacles into interpersonal success. See this site for workshop outlines, keynote footage, and customer results.

There is a phrase becoming popular in the customer service world that threatens both the customers and all of us in the profession. It’s a phrase we need to decry and banish from our vocabulary especially in the powerful world of social media.

The phrase we need to remove is: “Fire the customer!”

This threatening phrase:

• Diminishes our integrity instead of building trust
• Undermines our caring purpose rather than succeeding through care
• Broadcasts selfishness and greed vs. radiating greatness
• Declares customer service to be a power struggle instead of a partnership
• Makes all customers who read it more defensive instead of cooperative
• Teaches a new generation of customer service professionals a skewed view
• Projects a tug-of-war mindset rather than a winning collaboration

Are there times when we can’t meet a customer’s need or expectation? Sure.
Yet how we part company — and speak about — echoes our brand throughout the global reach of social media.

For those business owners proudly using the phrase “fire the customer” all over Twitter, Facebook, and beyond, it’s worth a moment to consider an alternative.

The times I have not been able to continue with a customer, I have said:

“Although I cannot meet your needs and must pass on this opportunity, I wish you success …”

I am not “firing the customer”, as the current threatening phrase likes to power tout. I am firing myself! How we say things in difficult moments affects the future of our brand.


Current customers and social media tell future customers what we believe; they wonder how we will treat them. Every tweet, every post, every statement tells the world what we think of customers as a whole.

Customers talk about us too; what they say is actually up to us!

I vote to give superior customer service — not to be superior over customers. What do you want customers to say about you and your brand?


From my professional experience to your success,
Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach™

Related Posts:
Free Your Mind to Give Superior Customer Service in Difficult Situations
What Do We Want Customers to Feel, Experience, and Remember?

©2012 Kate Nasser, CAS, Inc. Somerville, NJ. I appreciate your sharing the link to this post on your social streams. However, if you want to re-post or republish the content of this post, please email info@katenasser.com. Thank you for respecting intellectual capital.

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Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach™, delivers coaching, consulting, training, and keynotes on leading change, employee engagement, teamwork, and delivering the ultimate customer service. She turns interaction obstacles into interpersonal success. See this site for workshop outlines, keynote footage, and customer results.

A recent CBS Sunday Morning Show featured behind the scenes details of derogatory names companies have for their customers.

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Some Wall Street firms refer to their investors as “muppets”.

Airlines nickname their infrequent passengers “hillbillies or Clampetts” referring to the old TV show The Beverly Hillbillies.

They dub very frequent customers as “Platinum Trash”.

Credit card companies nail the tag “deadbeats” to their customers who pay their balance in full every month.

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As a customer service/experience pro, I listened with some outrage, sadness, and then wonderment.

The leaders of these companies don’t get it  Even if they don’t use these words themselves, they have not done enough to establish a positive culture of valuing the customer.

THE Threat to Superior Customer Experience

Corporate Narcissism

Loving Everything But the Customer

Misapplied Thinking That Fuels This Threat

• Freedom of speech. Freedom of speech does not justify hating the customers. If you cannot respect customers, then perhaps it’s best not to build your livelihood on serving them.




• Bluntness relieves stress. There are days when individual workers may find working with customers frustrating. They may blow off some steam privately and offline to relieve the stress.

  Yet the leadership is there to correct that course to ensure it doesn’t become a culture of disrespecting the customers. Leadership is there to teach and remind everyone what it feels like to be a customer and what the customer means to the business.




• Treat the employees well and they will treat customers well. Not necessarily. If leadership and employees treat each other well and collectively disrespect the customers, it will not produce superior customer experience. You cannot hide loathing.

I travel a great deal and can always spot flight attendants and hotel staff who think positively about the customers and those who don’t.

I’m not psychic. It’s in every gesture and word they say. It’s in their proactive help or their indifferent delay.

When company leaders tolerate thinking that degrades customers – even behind the scenes — they are agreeing to it. From thinking comes attitudes and daily behavior with long term strategy not far behind.


How Sad
Picture flight attendants thinking, “I wonder how many platinum trash I will grovel around today?” Can you imagine flight crews dreading the boarding process with so many hillbillies?

Will these crews come across as personable and caring or resentful, impatient, and patronizing?

Do the employees of credit card companies know the value of a customer who pays their balance in full every month? It would be much more valuable to have each employee know that than to foster or tolerate corporate disgust of customers. If there is no business value, why keep them as customers?

As for Wall Street, the world has witnessed the outcome of runaway disregard for customers and their money. From the epithet of investors as “muppets”, we can see the thinking that produced the second greatest economic crisis in modern history.


Good News
There are many companies who have established a customer valued culture that inspires the thoughts and the actions of all employees.

There are airlines now helping the customers as they traverse airport concourses as well as on the flights. They are using kool technology, like Ipads, yet realize that the care comes from the heart.

As other airlines redesign planes to have more economy plus seats with extra leg room in coach class and fully reclining seats in business first, hopefully they will redesign the culture to value everyone who buys and flies. Why improve anything for people you view as trash?

As companies like Ritz-Carlton, Nordstroms, and Zappos, and outstanding hospitals like St. Jude’s Childrens’ Hospital and magnet nursing centers continue to shine their customer care for all to see, we can encourage leaders in other companies to see the true benefit of a customer valued culture.

Call to Action
CEOs and their leadership teams of confused corporations would do well to look at how companies have embraced customer value.

Delivering superior customer service experience doesn’t come from fancy technology, or marketing, or metrics, or branding. It starts at the heart of how a company thinks about customers and brings that thinking to life in its strategy, policies, and interactions.

Thoughts breed actions and many companies ask customers for feedback on their actions. What are your customers saying about your thoughts and culture? That’s worth exploring.

I am honored and thrilled to be working with many companies and professional practices that want to move beyond surveys and go all the way to a customer valued culture.

April is customer loyalty month. Let’s get started!


From my professional experience to your success,
Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach™

Related Post: Simply Great Choices for Super Customer Experience

Special thanks to CXJourney on Twitter for sending me the URL link for the airline story.

©2012 Kate Nasser, CAS, Inc. Somerville, NJ. If you want to re-post or republish the content of this post, please first email info@katenasser.com for terms of use. Thank you for respecting intellectual capital.

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Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach™, delivers coaching, consulting, training, and keynotes on customer service & experience, employee engagement, teamwork, and leading change. Kate turns interaction obstacles into business success. See this site for workshop outlines, keynote footage, and customer results.

National Customer Service Week 2010 is coming to an end yet the endless demand for superior customer service lives on.  I continue to learn and build my expertise even after 20 years of working with customers across multiple industries.  To honor all who work with customers, I share the following insights to retool, refuel, and revive your spirit even on the toughest day.  I believe you will find inspiration in them for training the best technical support analysts and customer service reps.

In business you get what you want by giving other people what they want. ~ALICE MACDOUGALL

Inspiration for Training the Best

1. Procedures and protocols can block listening. Life is not a protocol. Business is not a protocol. Customers don’t fit into protocols; they build our business. Listen and adapt to them!




2. Compete against yesterday’s high point — not against each other. Some team members are motivated by competition. Replace competition between team members with competition against yesterday’s best service. Beat that everyday and watch service and teamwork soar.




3. Impact beats intention. A Twitter colleague and employee engagement expert, Ava Diamond, wrote that intent does not equal impact. In customer service, I go further and say impact beats intent. Your words and actions must have a positive impact! Your intentions are of little value when the impact of your words was negative.




4. An authentic smile changes everything. Yes, customers can tell when you authentically care and the smile (in person, on the phone, in online chat) is the window to that caring.




5. Being positive to thorny customers does not teach them to be ruder next time. A technical support analyst asked me “Why does a difficult customer deserve to be treated well when s/he is acting badly? Read the answers here … 5 Things to Think With Difficult & Rude Customers.




6. Empathize before you analyze. Verbalizing empathy and commitment to the customer paves a smoother road to problem solving.




7. Kindness Transcends Constraints. A blog post by The Knowledge Bishop reminds all that kindness to the customer keeps the loyalty bond alive while you work to solve the customer’s problem.




8. Scripts are a monologue. The best customer service is a dialogue.




9. Personalize and localize for legendary service. When a customer gives you her/his name, use it when speaking to them. Else you are treating them like a data point. Secondly, learn, understand, and adapt to a customer’s culture. Here’s one positive step in that direction: Regional Differences in American Customers – What They Expect!

What would be your #10 for this list? It could be your original thought or a favorite quote. Leaders, share this list with your team as an inspirational exercise and have them create #10!

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Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach and customer service guru, continues on in her 21st year of inspiring teams in customer service and sales to transform their daily work to a constant celebration of success with customers. Her workshop Delivering the Ultimate Customer Experience is one you won’t want to miss!

The best language for superior, truly memorable customer service is the language your customer understands. If your reaction is “no kidding”, please give this topic another moment’s consideration. I am not speaking purely about languages like English, French, Spanish, Italian, German, Russian, Swedish, Arabic, etc… I am not even speaking just about avoiding the use of slang expressions or your company’s many acronyms to ensure superior customer service.

The best language for superior customer service is language that describes your knowledge in ways that the customer can truly understand. It doesn’t matter whether you are delivering internal customer service to employees of your organization or external customer service to those that buy your products/services. If your customer doesn’t understand what you are saying, it isn’t superior customer service. I wouldn’t even call it customer service.

What does describing your knowledge in language the customer understands truly include?

A. Explaining everything from the customer’s perspective and interest vs. your expert view.

B. Using online and print forms that speak to the customer not from your software system’s design. Have you seen many well designed forms — those that don’t need explanation?

C. Designing bills and other financial statements that present info a way a non-financial expert thinks. Bank statements often prominently display “average daily balance” at the end. The number I want to quickly see is ending balance not average daily balance. A hotel bill I once received at Mohonk Mountain House resort displayed the information as double entry accounting — credits/debits. My reaction was “Are you joking?”. Most non-financial people don’t think in terms of double-entry accounting and many don’t even understand double-entry accounting. The makers of Quicken financial software built their business around this simple fact.

D. Presenting website information — especially the online buying process — with words that customers understand vs. words that the finance and technology departments use.

Superior customer service requires that you communicate all your knowledge in ways the customer understands.

What other examples would you add to the list?

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Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach, addresses all the frontiers of communicating with diverse customers for superior customer service. Her newest training DVD Customer Service USA – What They Expect Coast to Coast & Everywhere in Between (click to preview) covers the regional differences throughout the USA and Canada to truly satisfy North American customers.

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