Dealing with red customers
Be assertive, not aggressive.
From stress to silence
This coming week I will be away on Vipassana in the Judean desert.
I suspect my path to Vipassan started with daily Qi-gong practice 5 years ago.
My best friend Michael Levy — who is a software engineering master of epic proportions — turned me onto Tai Chi. He thought it would be a good way to reduce the stress of running a startup.
Michael trained in judo at a dojo in Tel Aviv for many years. One day — one of the young guys threw him. Michael fell and fractured his ankle in a very bad way. After recovering, he moved on to a gentler martial art: Tai Chi.
I found a teacher in Modiin, who gives group classes in a park. She explained that she teaches Qi-gong. After some discussion — I joined her class.
Qi-gong is much older than Tai Chi. Qi-gong is a form of movement meditation and about controlling your Qi. There are many common elements between Tai Chi and Qi-gong. Won’t go into them here.
Since then, Qi-gong became part of my daily routine.
A core principle of Qi-gong and Tai Chi is the notion of being assertive and not aggressive.
When you are firmly rooted in the ground, you derive tremendous power from the ground and your core and hips. You do not need to be aggressive.
Just be assertive.
Beyond high maintenance
SaaS customers are measured with 2 metrics — recurring revenue, and maintenance costs.
Beyond high maintenance - red customers are the folks who pull your support teams into a dangerous curve on a rainy day on a 2 lane road with a Mack truck coming in the opposite direction.
Like color, the customer maintenance spectrum goes from Red to Violet.
The red customer anti-pattern
It’s counterintuitive, but a red customer does not really want to solve his problem. He doesn’t want to address the root cause of his problem. He wants to be angry and hurt someone else - you.
A red customer would rather pay a lawyer $750/hour to sue you than pay you $750 to fix an issue.
Addressing the root cause would require a red customer expending energy that he does not have for a purpose that does not interest her.
We can tear red customers down into sub-spectra of craziness.
A Busy Important Person who Cannot Be Bothered with Details.
A fool that thinks that $49.95/month will buy her a 2026 Lexus LX SUV (starting at $92,160).
An executive who uses vendors to deflect board attention from internal issues.
A newbie, trying to do something that is way over his pay grade. The influencers on social media all tell you that is GOOD TO DARE and BE ALL YOU CAN and DON’T OVERTHINK IT - START NOW.
The reality is that newbies can be super-annoying and rarely achieve their goals. If you are this kind of customer, it is likely that your thought processes are so unclear that your potential partners and suppliers cannot (or will not want) to work with you.
Violet customers solve problems
The violet customer has a goal and a problem. He understands that right now — you (his supplier) is his best shot at solving the problem. He might fire you later — but for now — he is pragmatic.
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Training humans to deal with red customers.
I honestly don’t think that AI support agents are a great solution. Not yet at least.
The good news is that you can train your support teams to handle red customers.
It will require practice. A lot of practice.
You cannot take a checklist — have a support engineer memorize it and be effective on calls with red customers.
In my experience it takes about 6 months practice to develop a proficiency of supporting difficult cases with Qi-gong.
But - it is an investment well worth making. Both for you and for the people on your team who support customers.
Why support customers with Qi-gong
There are 5 advantages to being firmly rooted in your ground beneath your feet; being assertive yet not aggressive.
You are patient. You are literally not going anywhere
You are a rock. Red customers will try and manipulate you into doing something that is a bad idea. Like escalating a problem to the CEO and then forcing the CEO to give service personally. Rocks do not improvise. They just are. Customers sense that you are a rock and sense your confidence.
You are detached. You have the energy to go up to 20,000’ from the red customer’s problem, circle, and get back on a problem solving track.
You are not emotional. You are just standing there. You can think how much you want the customer to be happy instead of thinking how you want to grab an M16 and shoot her. You can ask the red customer 5X to send support requests to the Level 1 support team instead of calling the CEO personally. It is not an emotional or a personal issue.
You are empathetic. Since you are now a detached rock, firmly rooted in the ground, you can be emphatic with the red customer instead of fighting with them.
Empathetic is not being a push-over or a softie. Emphatic is being quiet, assertive and dealing with the issue without getting dragged down.
You don’t have to identify with a red customer to be empathetic.
You just have to smile.
And after you finish smiling - you can fire them.
Handle red customers with respect before you fire them without remorse
About me
I’m a pharma-tech founder who learned hard lessons the hard way. Over 22 years, I built five companies: four exits, one glorious flop. Customers ranged from Israeli medical device startups to Verily, Amgen and Walmart. 70+ clinical trials. 14 FDA.
My latest is OpenCRO - risk analysis for AI-enabled medical device companies.
We build a cyber and privacy risk analysis in an afternoon.
OpenCRO agents take the threat scenarios, build a threat model and write analysis showing how to reduce reputation, revenue and regulatory risk.
If you are running an AI-enabled device company - I’d love to hear your story.