Matt Heaton, the founder of BlueHost (the firm that I use to host this site) wrote in his personal blog about the difficulty in balancing customer service needs of hundreds of thousands of customers [link].  He writes that the vast majority of folks contact customer service as needed, and don’t exceed the normal unspoken boundaries that a rational person would adhere to (we’re talking 50 calls/emails to customer service a month).

Then he writes about another group, I call them customer service greedy, who leap over this boundary:

These are the people that are generally new to web hosting and have expectations that are almost impossible to meet. They demand the world, don’t/won’t understand what responsibilities fall under their control (domain issues, script security, etc) and what is under our control (servers, network connectivity etc). Often they will call as many as 50 times in a single month for support and hand holding. These are the people that REFUSE to learn on their own and constantly require us to do everything for them. For their $7 a month they expect instant answers to their questions via phone, chat, and email, and tolerate no faults on our side as if they have a cluster of managed dedicated servers. These customers cost us 10-50 times what they pay us and threaten to leave when things don’t go their way.

I believe it is of the utmost urgency for businesses to provide the highest level of service to all their customers (something BlueHost does very well).  That being said, as part of my work, I’ve always been in communication with customers/clients, both on a close level and at the periphery.  And there can definitely be a *very* small core of folks who are extremely greedy with the finite customer service resources available.  These people can be a drain on the system, causing delayed service for everyone else, and not only eat into profits, but potentially resulting in price increases for everyone.

Sprint recently went so far as to terminate the contracts for thousands of these ‘bad customers’ [link].  Now, I don’t think this was a necessary step - maybe it should have been a last resort.  A more rational approach would have been to notify the greedy group that if they wish to continue to receive exorbitant service, they will have to pay a premium for it.  I think BlueHost should consider doing that.  Hire a few extra customer service reps to handle these trouble accounts, and charge them each an extra x amount per month for a premium service package.

Try to make some lemonade out of those lemons, Matt.