In the 90's, I was made aware of a bank that became famous for charging its customers to see a teller. National news crews descended upon our city to show people in line with their passbooks demanding a better policy towards their branch operations. It ran in a national TV story under the title, "Bank Fires Its Customers." Emotions ran high as grandmothers were told indirectly they were no longer valued as customers.

I recently was reminded that there is no new history, just "old history happening to new people." A few days ago, I came across a story about another company whose approach was to potentially dismiss difficult customers. Titled, "The customer isn't always right; ending business relationships no longer taboo", the story comes from a high tech help desk where a process that goes by the acronym "F.I.R.E." is used to work though difficult customer interactions. Now, the approach does attempt to gain an understanding of why the customer has become difficult to handle, while also including a potential remedy for dismissing the customer via higher prices or other mechanisms, but in the end, many difficult customers are told to find other suppliers.

This sentiment is not new, but it's one to ponder. Maybe a better question to ask would be, "Why are these our customers in the first place?" Did an overzealous marketing effort produce what Fred Reichheld would refer to as "bad profits" by attracting the wrong customers to begin with?

By the way, the profits in the retail division of the bank I was referring to soared under their teller approach. Many of their most resource intensive customers left for other banks where there were no fees.

I’m not sure where I fall out on the issues of "firing customers." What about you?