A lot of what you learn during your career comes during the early years. That’s why I’ve been reflecting back in recent columns on my start in the industry almost 40 years ago. One of my early lessons was that on occasion you might need to “fire” a customer. I’ve personally only done it once, and it became somewhat of an epic story.
By my mid-20s I was managing a dealership body shop, and I soon came to dread any time it would rain. Almost every time it did, some owner of a Firebird with a T-top roof would pull into the shop, asking for help with a water leak.
We eventually figured out a solution that generally worked, but when we were unable to solve one, we’d have to take the car to a GM training center about 80 miles away in Northern New Jersey. It was a time-consuming process, driving the vehicle there and back, so we always tried to fix the problem in-house if we could.
In one of the instances where we couldn’t solve the leak, we drove the car up to GM, then went back up to pick it up a few days later after the repairs were made. We water-tested it again at the dealership, and it all seemed fine.
But in the next heavy rain, the vehicle owner drove into the shop absolutely furious. She didn’t just complain about the roof still leaking. She lit into me with a string of accusations and personal attacks: You never drove the car up there. You’re a liar. You just put miles on my car joy-riding around.
She went on and on. Now, I can see someone questioning our abilities. I don’t like it, but I can take that. But to question my integrity, call me a liar and accuse me of not doing what we did after all the hoops we jumped through for her? That got to me.
“Get out,” I eventually told her.
She did – and drove straight from the dealership to the county courthouse, where she marched into the consumer affairs office. She began telling the woman behind the desk there – who I will call Alison – what crooks we were.
“What dealership?” Alison asked her. “And who there were you dealing with?”
“A guy named Mike LeVasseur,” the woman told her. “He’s a no-good liar.”
At that point, Alison calmly stood up and subtly flipped down the name plate on her desk. It was a name plate that read, “Alison LeVasseur.”
What are the odds that the only customer I’d ever told to “get out,” in a county with 520,000 people, would go to the one consumer affairs office where my wife was one of two employees?
Alison naturally had her supervisor handle that one from there on out. And it’s become one of those stories we laugh about to this day.
I’ve known shop owners over the years who boast about “firing a customer” nearly every week. That’s just never been my style. Most customers who are unhappy about a repair are just frustrated. They just want to vent and make sure you know they’ve been inconvenienced. Even when I don’t think they’re justified, that’s at least understandable, and I can deal with that.
But this woman’s personal attacks on my integrity were more than I was willing to endure. Did I handle it the best way? Maybe not, but I think there are times when firing a customer may be justified. I’ve dealt with thousands of people in my 39-year career, so I feel pretty good she was the only one who I asked to leave my business.
The lessons from this story: Make sure you’ve given your team the skills, tools and latitude they need to handle the unhappy customer. If it turns into unjustified personal attacks, it’s probably time to turn the situation over to someone else in the shop. Oh, and don’t fire a customer in the same county where your wife works in the consumer affairs office.
