5 Ways to Deal with Your .1% Problem

I bet your company has the same exact problem we have.

If you interact directly with consumers on any level, there’s a high likelihood that a tiny percentage of them are sucking up a majority of your customer service time.  For every 100,000 members in our system, 1 or 2 end up in this bucket, so we consider this a .1% problem, and I bet your ratio is about the same. (Interestingly, a tenth of the 1% rule of highly active, highly productive individuals).

These aren’t malicious pests per se (people trying to deceive our system); rather, these individuals become so passionate, so truly immersed in what we do, that they won’t leave you alone.  Their behavior is time consuming and erratic. They contact our customer service department over and over, discussing and debating for hours on end; they email multiple people in the company; they self-assign themselves as the police force, “outing” other community members for all sorts of random infractions, many of which aren’t infractions at all; they try to force themselves into programs.  Sometimes they help.  Most of the time, they don’t.

While the faces and names have changed over the years, the ratio hasn’t.  .1% is a constant.

So, how exactly does a company deal with these folks?  You can threaten to kick them out, but most customer service policies don’t articulate ‘being a time suck’ and ‘annoying’ as a violation of terms of service.  You can close their account, but that’s like jabbing a stick into the mouth of a hornet’s nest, beginning with a public-facing rampage of forum posting and social media updating, thus amplifying the customer service issue.  Of course, you make it easy to create new accounts, so you’re thrust into a game of Sherlock Homes meets Whack-a-Mole as you hunt down the accounts to shut them off.

5 Ways We Deal With Them:

1. Never get angry: No matter how frustrating, be firm, but stay positive in all communications.
2. Create a paper trail:  Be clear with company policy and with any requests, in writing.
3. Be visible: Any misinformed public statement should be addressed by you proactively and publicly
4. Be direct:  If they’ve insulted/attacked/are harassing another member of your community, reach out to that member directly
5. Create surprise dialogues:  call them unexpectedly to have a chat.  A phone call helps.  Don’t set a time, just do it.  If they don’t expect it, it usually means they won’t be fully “riled up”

But really, this is just applying Off before a summer BBQ:  you’re addressing the symptom of biting bugs, not eradicating the bugs altogether (you should drain the swamp!)

My suggestion is that the digital domain gets its own legal recourse for this.  What I’d like to see is a Digital Restraining Order (DRO) that protects companies against non-malicious but system-debilitating individuals.   There are laws that protect against similar activity in a retail environment – what if someone showed up at the Gap everyday and incessantly distracted the staff, folded and rehung clothes, adjusted advertising displays – and generally scared off customers.   The company could create a legal claim to forbid them from entering the store.  Why can’t I do that within the digital domain?

Once a DRO is filed, the individual wouldn’t be able to have any contact with the company nor would they be able to communicate about the company in any public forum.  Anti customer service?  Hardly.  This is the highest level of customer service you could apply to the rest of your community.

So, I’m waiting for the day I can save my staff a ton of time and they can say, “keep it up and you’ll owe a $20K fine and spend 30 nights in jail.”

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