Telling the Customer "You're Fired"?

Today I read an article on MSN about how Sprint has informed 1,000 of it's customers that they need to find a new wireless provider because they can no longer meet the customer's needs. Essentially Sprint told these customers the complain too much. Having worked now for over four years in the customer service industry I am both shooked and impressed by Sprints move. I can't tell you how many times I've been happy when an irrate, rude, disrespectful customer decides to close their account or disconnect their service. Maybe this is the wrong attitude to have but I firmly believe people get more when they are respectful.

That being said, I also know that providing quality customer service to every customer is a very difficult job. Sometimes customers lash out because they are being treated disrespectful or rude and in those cases I don't blame them. What I do have a hard time with is when customers treat every customer service representative badly, even when that person is trying to give good customer service. What is always ironic to me is how different people respond differently to things.

For example, yesterday I got yelled at by a customer over $50. Yes, this is a lot of money to a lot of people, but what was ironic was just after taking this call an employee on my team came to talk to me about an account with a balance over $1,000. This customer, she said, was not upset or rude or disrespectful, but obviously had some questions about her bill. Of these two customers I would expect to get yelled at by the second. And so when the first of these two customers threatened to disconnect her services I called that threat. Do I think Sprint is wrong for telling some of its customers to take a hike? Not at all. Now they can start spending time helping their other customers instead of listening to the bellyaching of a few grumpy people.