Seth Said It
Welcome to Seth Said It, the unapologetic podcast where real stories meet raw truths. Join Seth Mills as he dives into personal experiences, business growth, and the highs and lows of life’s journey. From lessons learned the hard way to the wins worth celebrating, Seth lays it all out with unfiltered honesty and a touch of humor.
This podcast is for those who value authenticity, aren’t afraid of a little controversy, and believe that growth often comes with a bit of discomfort. Whether it’s a deep dive into entrepreneurial struggles, personal growth breakthroughs, or just telling it like it is, Seth Said It is your go-to for real talk that inspires, challenges, and occasionally ruffles some feathers.
Tune in, stay curious, and remember: if it needed to be said, Seth said it.
Seth Said It
Grace Under Pressure in Handling Difficult Customers
When Harry Gordon Selfridge proclaimed "the customer is always right" over a century ago, he couldn't have imagined the lively debate it would spark on our show. My co-host, Nik Dawson, and I dissect this service industry commandment with a mix of storytelling and analysis. We take you behind the scenes of customer service, where the lines between respect, boundaries, and tough love are as intricate as the inner workings of a pool filter. From business owners to the corners of retail, our experiences shed light on why setting limits is as vital as the service itself. If you've ever questioned the delicate dance of customer interactions, you'll find camaraderie and enlightenment in our candid discussion.
Dealing with thorny pricing scenarios and tricky client relations is the bread and butter of many service industries. We dive into the deep end of valuation, customer confrontation, and the art of holding your ground, all while maintaining the grace of a swan on the water's surface. Hear our personal tales of clients who've pushed boundaries and how we've navigated the murky waters of late payments and discount demands without sinking. Whether you're wrestling with your own customer relations or simply crave an insider look at the service industry's dynamics, join us, Seth Mills and Nik Dawson, for an episode that's as refreshing as a plunge into a cool, clear pool.
Welcome back to the Astrocraft grow, influence and best podcast. I'm your host, seth Mills, joining me today as your host, your co-host, nick Dawson, and we're gonna be discussing Some various topics, but the main one and the first that I'd like to start off with is gonna be and this is gonna trigger a lot Of people the customer is not always right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I forgot to look that up before we started this did you okay?
Speaker 1:so basically, while he's looking it up, he was telling me so that the customer is always right used to be another company's slogan, and then it took off like wildfire Whenever other people started seeing it and it just started spreading. And then that is where we're at today, where everybody says the customer is always right, when in fact I'm not gonna say that they're always wrong, because they're not, but they're also not always right. There's a happy middle ground in between being right and wrong that, as a business owner, I have to understand and as a customer, they have to understand. Right. I mean, I Don't know how you feel on it you don't deal with well, you do deal with customers on a daily basis, but you're through a manufacturer. I deal with customers and if something's wrong Then it's automatically my fault or one of my employees faults.
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, I mean, but at the same time I Probably deal with a lot more, with oh you, you worked on my pool light. Now my heater doesn't work.
Speaker 1:Yeah, trying to blame you a little.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's like okay, well, I didn't have anything to do with your heater, I came here to fix a pool light. Like Well, you need to come back.
Speaker 1:That'll be another charge. Sorry, mm-hmm, yeah found it okay.
Speaker 2:So A very common saying in customer service is the customer is always right. This well-known phrase was coined by Harry Gordon Selfridge in 1909. Hmm, through some, oh so the customer's always been right since 1909.
Speaker 1:That's scary.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was a, as the founder of Selfridge's department store in London. Self-re-or in London, selfridge used this frame of mine to convince patrons that they would have an excellent customer experience, as well as as to Simultaneously persuade employees to provide high quality service. Hmm, but he coined it, but now we use it all over the place in the service side of Everything that we do not not even the service side it's.
Speaker 1:It's not even in just in the service side, it's restaurants, it sales, sales, amazon, for instance. I mean, if something goes wrong and and the customer orders the wrong item but Amazon ships them what they ordered, it's automatically Amazon's fault. And that's just one Way of looking at it as a service provider for me and you and many of us out there. If, for instance, a customer asks me to clean their windows but they have hardwater spots on them which this actually occurred with me yesterday I Show up and I start cleaning their windows in my terms and conditions.
Speaker 1:It explicitly says we do not clean hardwater stains Because they could be permanently etched in the glass. Well, we perform the cleaning after she signed the terms in agreement and and we finish the cleaning. Well, she gave us call back after we left and said, hey, there's hardwater spots. I said it. Unfortunately, that's an additional service and we're it's an upcharge, right. So that was another Kind of example of where the customer thinks they're always right, but if you read, it's not even fine print. It's in print like everything else on the estimate, but they always think that they're right.
Speaker 2:And and well, and I mean just Something like that, I'm sure you were able to tell her hey, we'll come back and we'll do that, and and I did.
Speaker 1:I offered, I said look, unfortunately it is not included. I said it is an additional service. However, I looked up her profile and her customer history with us and she's a very and she's an amazing customer. So I said I will do this one time free of charge for these three windows. But and let me preface this all by saying again, the customer is not always wrong- no, it never been, absolutely not Countless amounts of times that I've been wrong and I'm happy to admit it. I'm proud to admit that I make mistakes.
Speaker 2:I've been in front of customers and I've been blatantly wrong.
Speaker 1:Well, and then there's the customers if you're wrong, right, say, one of us are wrong and they are right. There's customers that once we acknowledge that we were wrong, we've made a mistake, or even if we just offered to fix it, whether or not we knew we were right or wrong, that will continue to push the subject.
Speaker 1:So, if we say, oh, I'm so sorry, and we go about fixing whatever or doing whatever they were inquiring about, right, they'll come up to you and continue hounding you for it. Those are the customers that I'm like. Okay, if you're going to keep on doing this, I'll walk off the job, issue you a refund and take my employees and my equipment and leave.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you have that. You have that option. You can't get bullied.
Speaker 1:You can't get bullied, but you don't have to take it Exactly. And so another thing, and I do not say this for part of my ego, I'm not saying this for ego or anything but as a business owner, you have to know when the proper time is to walk away. And customers, if you are a service provider right, like we are or at least more so on my end some applications for you, but more so on my end the customer needs to realize we can drop them as a customer just as quickly as they can drop us as a service provider. I mean, we can do it like that Walk away and say you're banned from using our services or our company and we will no longer service you. And a lot of customers now here in 2023, I think they've lost that, the site of that. They don't think that that is an option.
Speaker 2:Oh, I do, I think everybody from. I think everybody from 2019 till now has had this whole picture and this picture perfect thing of I can get what I want and I can get it right now. And everybody was pretty much in the mindset of the customer and the service provider were always kind of like coinciding with one another and you'd always have that one off customer. But then it's almost like 2019 hitting. It was like there was like this dividing line of my stuff and my needs need to get done now.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I will agree with you on that. But it's not just services, it's honestly the instantaneous of like the intent, instantaneous service of like Amazon or same day delivery that ruined it for even the service industry.
Speaker 1:It affected everybody. So, but I also think in 2019, yes, customers started saying, oh, I want it now, you can't get out here for two weeks, I'll go with somebody else, which then the question of quality versus speed comes in. But I'll get to that here in a little bit. Whenever you in 2019, that's what I was going to say in 2019, whenever that shift happened, there was also a shift within the service providers, more so, closer to COVID 2020, 2021, where service providers started saying, okay, there is an abundance of customers that I can service and I can do things for. I don't need this particular customer. I can tell them that we're no longer servicing them because they've been a difficult customer since we picked them up, however many years ago, which I'm not going to say names, but there's a few customers I will be very polite and professional about, but I will be dropping here in 2024.
Speaker 2:You have that ability.
Speaker 1:Am I going to play or am I going to take into consideration their membership with us and all of their customer profile? Absolutely. Am I also going to take into consideration the difficulty of getting paid by these customers, the difficulty of not dealing with but handling the situations with these customers? Am I going to take into consideration all of the complaints with these particular clients that I have had none with any of my other clients? Absolutely, Some of these clients I would like to not drop. However, I think as a big. And then there's the topic of, as a business decision, you have smart and not so smart movements you can make. Is the smart move getting rid of them or is the smart move keeping them? Because there's two sides to it. Their money is just as good as anybody else's, but how many problems are going to arise from these specific customers?
Speaker 2:I think it's also a matter of looking into. Okay, I can keep this one way One customer in an area say it's outside of your scope of where you like to do your work, but then you can also pick up three more in your neighborhood or somewhere closer to another customer. So instead of servicing one way out here, you can service all four of these over here on the same day.
Speaker 2:Kind of have to think about that. In that aspect I had this same conversation literally today with a builder of mine. They do a lot of pool cleaning and maintenance while they're trying to pick up more commercial work. Commercial pools they're trying to pick up. They've got a plenty of residential but they're trying to do commercial work. You can't quote commercial the same way as residential. I know in your your industry too.
Speaker 2:But for him he's like look, we've got a visit, we've got a visit this community pool two to three days a week. You're in the summertime.
Speaker 1:It's still gonna be cheaper. It's still well per square foot or per gallon.
Speaker 2:Well, you think of and I'll just throw some numbers out there. So you clean a residential pool for $2,300. We'll just keep it very broad. Well, in order for it to make sense for me to be at a community pool for two, three hours, instead of 15, 30 minutes, that community pool that I'm gonna be there two, three hours, two, three days a week, I have to charge accordingly you do On the spec, on the grand Scope of things, it's still gonna be a little cheaper than you would charge your residential, at least by the gallon, because a Residential I don't know.
Speaker 1:From what I know about the pool industry working at Leslie's for a little while, I know that pools are residential. Pools range from 15 to maybe 30,000 gallons roughly in. Usually the city limits you have for sure, and so, and then you've got Commercial pools that range from 80 to 130,000 easily.
Speaker 2:Easily depends. Depends on where you live. If you're an apartment, sometimes it might be 50,000 to 100,000, like I think mine's a hundred thousand something gallons.
Speaker 1:So there's more volume, right? Yeah, say you're it, and I'm just throwing random numbers out now. 10 cents a month per gallon, so say it's 15,000 gallons, that's a hundred fifty dollars a month to maintain that pool, whereas if it was a fifty thousand dollar commercial, you may be at eight cents, which would be more than a hundred fifty dollars. You're still gonna be making more on the commercial side, and Correct me if I'm wrong, because I don't know how the pool industry works. I know that that's how it works in my industry, with concrete cleaning, for an example. We charge anywhere from 15 to 18 cents residential, but we charge anywhere from eight cents to 12 cents commercial.
Speaker 2:Well, the big difference is is on a residential pool, you might have a family of, let's just say four that are swimming We'll just say, two days a week, and that's Saturday, sunday, because that's when they're home or Friday, saturday. Then you talk about a commercial pool where there are literally 50 plus people swimming in it every single day. Yeah, you've got more cost on your chemicals. You've got more cost on you're having to backwash filters all the time. You're having to document these chemicals because, depending on where you live, state laws and everything applied to that, there's a lot more that goes into it. But these community pools and these other residential or not residential, but these apartment complexes or hotels or everything else, they've got more money to be able to spend to maintain that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, if they're not maintaining it themselves. So I've been to plenty of apartments or hotels where they maintain it themselves To save that extra money. And they just have their maintenance crew do it, but as far as a pool professional.
Speaker 2:Going out there and doing it. You've got to make it worth your time because you may have some kid that Deficates in the pool more than a number one. You've got to shut the pool down and you've got to take the proper precautions and requirements for that. That takes more time out of your day and it costs more money.
Speaker 1:It would be, yeah, absolutely more money, because it's hazard pay at that point so you spend a lot more on the commercial.
Speaker 2:But he's like, by the time I finished talking to him, he was like half of what I was telling him he needed to charge and he was at half of what most Big companies are charging. So because he's not valuing it, he's valuing it like a residential.
Speaker 1:Yeah, he's doing the same pricing skill.
Speaker 2:But if you have an employee who's doing that. You don't have enough. You don't have enough money to be able to be able to pay them.
Speaker 1:Now you're having to dip out of other things to be able to keep him going to keep him going on that and pay for chemicals and pay for upkeep and gas, all the expenses, insurance, everything. Yeah, I can understand that and Obviously, running a business that way you're not gonna make money, you're gonna be bankrupt before the end of the year. So I do understand that and I do Agree with that.
Speaker 2:What I'm saying pick your battles. I Would never do anything on the commercial side of swimming pools. I can do it, I know how to do it, I have the, the certifications and everything to do so, but Not happening.
Speaker 1:I'm trying to think so as far as the customer.
Speaker 2:Or circle back my bad, my bad customer.
Speaker 1:Not always being right is 100% a thing. I Hate that America as a whole and the world really Interpreted that slogan from that one company I in 1909 and it's still going over 115 In fact check me on that.
Speaker 2:That was me telling you earlier, from me learning about that, however long ago. Feel free to fact check me either now or later in another Podcast, but for me I remember hearing that and going, wow, that was before I had a company. I just thought it was interesting information. So as soon as you we were talking today and you were like you have anything on the topic of the customer's always right, it like clicked in my head and I was like, absolutely, I do.
Speaker 1:Actually. So fact check, you're wrong. It was earlier than that, 1893, the Swiss hotel Caesar Ritz. He was most famous for the Ritz Hotel in Paris and Carlton in London. Use the slogan it's in France or Italian. I'm not gonna try and pronounce that. I would butcher that. But it the customer is never wrong as early as the 1990s or 1890s.
Speaker 2:Wow, yeah, longer than that. And yeah, and if you live or if you have a luxurious hotel, absolutely, they're not wrong, you know. Yeah if it comes to the point to where it's like that, yeah, they're not wrong, they're spending that kind of money to stay in your hotel. But you also got to remember people are spending a certain amount of money Working or having you work on their stuff. Absolutely, are they wrong? Can they be wrong? Yes, do we always tell them no?
Speaker 1:and that's the other thing. Yeah, I'm glad you brought that up because I do want to touch on that. As a business owner, you have to know, like you said earlier, pick your battles. You have to know when to defend yourself or your employees and and telling the customer that they are wrong, and when to keep your mouth shut and just say yes sir, yes, ma'am, I Apologize for the inconvenience and I will get it fixed or done, or whatever the case may be, because you you don't want to get a bad rap. It is so easy for customers to go on Google, facebook, yahoo, whatever other Platform, and give you a one-star rating these days and Google will do nothing about it if you get a fraudulent One-star rating, because I know several people who it's happened to.
Speaker 1:They get like five one-star ratings from just fake accounts. One of them was Yoda.
Speaker 2:Gave it, this dude, a review.
Speaker 1:One-star review, google wouldn't remove it. Google would not help the customer. In that sense has more power Than the, the business owner as far as that goes, even if there's no record of of you working with the customer really.
Speaker 1:Unfortunately. So going from the customer is Not always right and again I'm gonna get so much hate for for saying that or even bringing that up and then circling back to the being bullied by customers. You need to know when to press your issue about getting paid right. So I've had I sent out seven invoices. Because we do Christmas light installs, I sent out seven or nine invoices. Because the first year for my customers is typically free uninstallation, I Sent out seven or nine, maybe 15. I don't know how many.
Speaker 1:It was a certain amount of right voices last week, three customers Did not pay, and keep in mind these three customers had to pay the, or two of the three customers had to pay the fee Last year, which again was sent out ahead of time because we always send it out before we go take down the lights Is a Christmas light, an installation fee. Well, one of the customers as a matter of fact I will Not gonna say names, no, I'm sure he listens to my podcast and so, if you do, I'm not no hate. I will preface this by saying that it's just an example that I'm gonna give. I Sent him a text. I said hey, I Just sent over your, your uninstall fee, same as last year. Then he said what is this? Is this auto text stuff? Meaning, is this like a robot sending me an automatic text?
Speaker 2:I said the last text was a personal text to you.
Speaker 1:The 125 is the same fee we charge every year, including what we charge you last last year, which again we sent it out prior to uninstall last year as well. He said he will pay it when he gets home. I said, okay, cool, perfect. And then a couple days went by. My system automatically starts charging through my account. Then I said through my account then automatically starts charging late fees after the third day of not being paid. Well, it started charging him. So I just take a text and I said I just waived the late fee. It charged you after today. I'm not sure my account will or my account and service will. Let me do it again, just adds up.
Speaker 1:Then he replies and this goes back to the being bullied by customers hey man, I'm just telling you, if you charge me a late fee for something that isn't being done for probably and then I think he meant for probably Two weeks or something All I said was that isn't being done for probably, I can assure you you won't be doing them. You should tell your accountant to. You should tell your accountant to that. That's not how business works. I've got a great accountant if you need somebody that wants to help you grow your business and not piss people off. It has nothing to do with the money. You should really figure out the process as far as not charging people until the work is done.
Speaker 1:Not trying to be a dick, but so he said that right, and I'm I'm over here. We did the same thing last year. We charged him and then and then his solution. His solution to this is To charge him for install and uninstall Up front whenever we install the lights, rather than Waiting till a week before we uninstall the lights two weeks, whatever to charge him the 125 Fee because it's 125 uninstall. His solution was Charge me whenever you come in install the lights. Is that not the same Concept?
Speaker 2:because yeah, I think it could be the same concept. I mean, I guess it's just a matter, but it's not his company.
Speaker 1:Well, for one, it's not his company and two, he's griping and complaining, which, okay, please do if you have an issue. He's complaining about me Charging him the 125 dollar fee for uninstall without the lights being uninstalled, and then he his solution is it charge me the uninstall fee when you put them up the it. His exact words were why don't you just charge it up front and put up and say that this is for takedown as well? Then you're done. That includes put up and takedown. Easy. Smack the mic there a little bit, but I Mean I again, you could do it either way.
Speaker 2:I can understand what he's saying, but I understand what you're saying to you at the end of the day and cheer company. But you could charge him that in full.
Speaker 1:But it's either that or he can take down the lights himself see, and and it's not the first time that I've and the other several times that I've had an issue with his house had I will be 100% honest. They've been an issue because one of my suppliers didn't send me the right stuff, or my guys didn't pick up, or I didn't pick up, because I never blame anything on my employees I didn't pick up this stuff out of storage and so and I and I didn't make sure it was in the truck, so that was on me. But I've had countless amounts of issues with this one one house, and it's only this one house. So I don't know how I'm gonna proceed.
Speaker 2:But Well, and again, I guess it goes back to your terms and conditions. If it's in your terms and conditions that hey, there's a later fee that of $125 to come take down your lights, I Guess at that point they could either read it and then give you a check for $125 at a later date Yep, be done with it, or I don't know. There's so many different ways I feel like you could approach that.
Speaker 1:No, absolutely. And then so we run a subscription service for window cleaning and all of that information or all of that stuff, right. So you pay a yearly fee and you get four cleanings. It's typically if you pay for the year in advance, you get 25% off. So you essentially pay for three cleanings and you get the fourth one free.
Speaker 1:Yeah one of my clients is on that. One of that. That client also seems also happens to do Christmas lights through us. So I text her and I Just said hey, if you need me to extend the invoice because it was about to start charging late fees, if you need me to extend the invoice a few days, I can Give with my team, excuse me and have them do it. I just don't want you to start getting charged late fees. After this evening they will start occurring late fees.
Speaker 1:Smiley face Love the smiley emoji. Use it every day. Then she said listen, I always pay in advance and shouldn't. I'll pay when the lights are down, immediately. You shouldn't pay in advance because you're paying. The only thing she's ever paid in advance for Was the window cleaning service and then we ran a black Friday sale to where you could renew your service Two cleanings in advance. So halfway through your your original start a contract. You could renew it for an additional discount off of the 25% if you renewed it for another year. And she did that. I'm not forcing the customer to do it, I'm just keeping them because I send out a mass text saying, hey, we have a sale going on and and we're going to be giving an additional sale right. So it's not like I'm forcing her to subscribe no to any of the services, and it's that that text seemed like it was, so I don't know. This all ties back into getting paid from your clients, because neither of them sent me and and sent me the Payment yet.
Speaker 2:Well, what are you? Do you have them on like a do on receipt net 15, net 30? What is your?
Speaker 1:everything that runs through my company, unless it is a commercial, is do on receipt. Unless it's through two companies that I do commercial work for, it is a net 15. I got you which that will be being terminated here very soon the Net 15.
Speaker 2:I don't blame you through my company anyway. I mean for me like whenever I first started the Costa boys, whenever I first started the company I was like scrounging for work right, struggling, trying to find it because I wasn't doing anything for the manufacturer I work for now and I had one guy that was very gracious to give me everything I needed to get started, gave me the parts I needed, gave me the exact invoice that he gave, but I didn't have to buy anything.
Speaker 2:He just was like here. And so by the time I got to this house, which is in the middle of freaking Houston now we're away from where I live and I get down there and there's complications I ended up going down there like four times and one man operation made it a pain. But she was like oh well, is there any way I can get a discount on this? Well, at that point again, I was like I was already feeling good because I was like oh well, yeah, you know, I just got this job landed for free in the first week of me having the company, why not?
Speaker 2:Well, by the time my accountant and everybody had sent the information to the homeowner, the homeowner basically was like I'm not paying this until you drop the price down to what we discussed. And it was this whole debacle of okay, well, you could just put custom pay and pay me what we said and I'll just waive the rest of it. But it got to the point where and I didn't know how quick books worked, I didn't take any classes, I didn't know how any of that stuff worked. I had to make phone calls and figure it all out, come to find out it's a lot easier than I was making it, but I was freaking out and so as soon as I changed it still took her a week to freaking pay me.
Speaker 1:Really.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Wow.
Speaker 2:And then, after I fixed everything, she calls me two times in a row big pet peeve of mine. Calls me two times around and then texts me and tells me one of her lights is out again.
Speaker 1:She's out of warranty, though, so Sorry, it's gonna be an additional charge.
Speaker 2:So hey, there's a great pool supply company about 11 minutes away from your house. We don't service that far down south anymore, Yep.
Speaker 1:See, and that's it. All ties back into knowing when you need to get paid and also knowing when not to get bullied by your clients. So I mean and that's what I really wanted to make this episode about was being bullied by your clients and collecting money as well as the customer's not always right, because they as much as hate as I'm gonna get for it. The customer is not always right.
Speaker 2:They've got some right in them.
Speaker 1:They do, but it they might be right 50%, maybe 70, maybe, maybe 70, maybe, but they're not always right.
Speaker 1:No, there's that good you as a professional have to be the professional and you have to decide what's right and what's not for the job that you're doing and you also have to, as a professional, know when to stand your ground and would not do, because you can get into some deep shit, oh yeah. So I mean I don't know. And again, going back to the topic about getting paid from my clients, these two clients, I mean yeah, they're great clients. At least one of them is, and she's I mean she's always been super sweet, except for now. So I don't know if I just caught it on, and that's the other thing you have to know. If you're gonna catch somebody on a bad day, you have to give them a couple of extra days to get over, whatever it is.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:And then reach out again or just leave it be.
Speaker 2:Because they might be going through something. Family might be going through something. You're gonna know, everybody's gonna be going through something in their own way. Unfortunately, we don't always get that same privilege.
Speaker 1:Oh, and I know all about that right now.
Speaker 2:Hell, me too. Yeah, I don't have a place to live except for my folks place right now. Yup. So that same day that they were like yep, nope which I gotta be careful what I say about that but whenever it was like, yeah, you can't, I wouldn't go back in there right now, it was like when am I?
Speaker 1:supposed to go? Where am I supposed to go?
Speaker 2:But then I have to be like hello, this is Nick, this is Nick. Oh no, absolutely, we can get that fixed for you today.
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 2:I have to go right back to it and then just put that on the back burner till.
Speaker 1:Till you're alone, yeah, so, yeah. Well, thank you guys for tuning in to the Astro Craft Grow Influence Invest podcast. I'm your host, seth Mills, and your co-host, Nick Dowson. And we will see you guys in the next episode. Have a Merry Christmas and a happy new year.
Speaker 2:Happy Hanukkah.
