On Firing Your Customers

Customers fall into two general camps: angels and devils. Angel customers are people who apologize for wasting the organization's time when they call in, or better yet don't complain. They pay their bills on time, and have nothing but good things to say about their provider.

Devils on the other hand look for any crass opportunity to seize upon. They will call up demanding credits, questionable refunds, and have no problem wasting the organization's time. They have an axe to grind and are looking out for any new potential victim, where exploit their unfair tactics.

Most people fall somewhere between these two extremes. Cause for concern becomes an issue when one moves from one end of the spectrum to the other (especially Angel to Devil), where one should evaluate getting rid of the "Devils".

Recently Sprint has announced the firing of a 1000 or so customers off their cell phone system, due to excessive inquiries and demands.

So whats the idea here?

I guess Spring thought they (the bad customers) were were costing more money than they were actually worth. Seth Godin's article on Sprints flawed logic is bang on, where the 1000 customers complaining too much is a symptom of an even bigger problem.

What companies need to be worried about is moving customers from being Angels to Devils due to their psychopathic/neglectful customer service.

The story that those 1000 "devil" customers had been telling about Sprint, all of a sudden just got that much bigger.