10 Surefire Ways To Drive Away Paying Customers

Zayah Uche

Even though the stated objectives of most businesses is to maximize profits by providing the best possible service or products to its customers, I have come to expect to be treated shoddily and possibly insulted whenever I intend to do business with most Nigerian organizations. And I do not think I am alone in this feeling. Somehow most people have come to expect bad service in most places which is why we are pleasantly surprised whenever we do get good service. Since I believe that customers do not just leave but are driven away, I have listed a few easy ways by which businesses can drive away their customers.



Blame it on the rain, the wrapping, or the Government: When customers return something they bought from you with a complaint; peer at them from underneath your browser for a couple of seconds without saying a word, examine the article thoroughly, then ask them in your best imitation of a headmaster's voice 'are you sure you bought this here? Did your dog chew on it, because these here look like dog teeth marks? Whatever you do, never accept the blame, and for good measure tell the customer that you are out of stock on that particular item and will replace it as soon as you restock. Never mind that the shelf behind you is packed with the stuff and the customer can see it.

Offer phantom freebies and promotions: Attach unrealistic conditions to your promotions. If you have one of those 'buy one get one free' offers, be sure that you are always out of stock. When customers come in, just put on your best smile, throw your hands up in mock exasperation and say 'sorry, that lady just walked out with the last one,' just be sure to always add to your promo adverts this qualification WHILE STOCKS LAST! You may also decide to give away stuff unconditionally for a couple of days, but make sure that the giveaways are really cheap and inferior stuff or totally out of fashion. Your customers will gladly reject them.

Treat your customers like they do not know what they want: If you do not have the exact thing a customer wants, offer her something else that is not even close to what she wants in either quality or value. If they decline, try to convince that the one they really want is no good which is why you never stock it. If this fails, give them a seat in your office and tell them to wait while you go find it. Then keep them waiting for ten minutes and when you finally return bring with you something similar to what they originally rejected and tell them it is the only stuff available in the market.

Take sides with your staff against your customers: If you happen to walk in on an argument between your staff and a customer, take sides with your staff. After all, customers come and go, but staff...that is a pain you have to live with. If a customer comes to you complaining about how they were treated by your staff, lean back in your easy chair, yawn, then give them the lowdown on all your problems. Make them understand that their minuscule complaint is the least of your troubles. They will never come complaining to you, ever!

Tell them to leave because you are about to go home: You know how on some days just as you are about to close shop, customers just seem to come rushing out from wherever they have been and keep you thirty minutes longer than you planned to stay. Well you no longer have to endure those inconsiderate 'so and so's,' just wear your best frown and tell them firmly “sorry you cannot stay, and I do not care if your baby has run out of diapers.” If they persist, let them in politely, then lock them in and go on happily to your home. Everybody gets what they want, problem solved.

Cheat them on price: The average person is very trusting and gullible, so when you first open shop, sell your goods at the most competitive prices in the neighborhood. When customers become comfortable with you, begin to inch your prices upwards without improving on quality or service. At the same time become even more aggressive in advertising your shop as the lowest-price-highest-value destination in town. Do not worry about their finding out, people are creatures of habit, once they start buying from you they will not think about your prices, they will just follow their instincts.

Offer the best products at the lowest prices and never let them forget it: Ensure that your shop is always stocked with the best range of products in any product class. Moreover, sell these products at the very best prices. Best value at the lowest prices, an unbeatable combination. But here is the best part, be a total jerk the total time! Let your customers never forget that you are doing them a favour, or that you are special...a gift of God to them. Make them wait, be abrupt when you speak with them and remind them that they can always go someplace else if they do not like your shop. Of course, you know they will not, after-all, you are the special one!

Be extremely business like with your customers: Do not treat them like friends. You know how some customers can begin to get familiar with a business owner, even stopping to say hello when they are not buying. Deal with the problem by never complimenting customers or smiling at them and if you happen to run into one of your customers in town, keep a straight face and be sure not to say 'hello’. This is guaranteed to stop even the most rabidly friendly customers. If it does not work, be mean to their children or their dog, that should get them.

Employ royalty as sales people and cashiers: Permit your staff to suck on lollipops or chew gum while speaking with your customers, they could even pop gum at the customer. If you have a television in the office, put it in a place where staff can get the best view, then let them control the television remote. Also let your staff get into fights and arguments between themselves and keep the customers waiting or better still let the customer get caught in the cross-fire. Your staff is your greatest asset, treat them like royalty.

Never answer the phones or attend to complaints: Have a big scarlet complaints box at your service points and encourage customers to leave any complaints they have in the box. Go even further and provide cards or forms to help customers inform you on the type of service they got but never attend to the complaints. If customers see a complaints box they are less likely to call and bother you with their insignificant grievances. Additionally, just to make your business appear trendy and up to speed, build a website complete with contacts details and all, but never answer that phone, in fact make sure the numbers on the website where delisted ages ago.

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The Origins of Football

A Global Game:
Trying to pinpoint the exact starting point for what is now the world’s most popular sports is like trying to find a needle in a haystack. England may have been the home of football, but the first instances of foot meeting ball may well have taken place thousands of miles away; and as time moved on, the formative game was being adopted and invented in various guises all across the globe. Nobody took football to the world; the world discovered it in dozens of locations over thousands of years

The China Link:
Traditionalists often talk of the early game being played out with hollow pigs’ bladders which could burst at any moment. Certainly there is some truth in this assumption – today, we believe the earliest incarnation of football to have been played with animal skins in ancient China around 2500 BC. The ‘ball’ was kicked between poles some thirty feet high, and may have served a military purpose; soldiers were trained using the rough-and-tumble of game play and matches were held to mark important dates in the calendar.

A Game of Peace:
By AD 50, the Chinese had named the game ‘tsu chu’ and early records compare the round ball and square goal to Yin and Yang, the ancient symbols of harmony an interesting contrast to the distinctly inharmonious scenes that followed as the game developed. Historians have also suggested that ancient Egyptian fertility rites may have been linked, in some was, to a form of football; however a more plausible stage of development was a Mexican game in AD 600 which involved forcing a ball through a hole in the wall of a specially designed court. Certainly, the Mexicans came up with the first synthetic footballs.

Gang Warfare:
By the time the game was developing in England, it had taken a strangely comic – and occasionally tragic – turn for the worse. The earliest stories of football date from around AD 1100 and involved a crude chasing of a ball through city streets by gangs of youngsters egged on by their parents. There was little organization either in terms of fixtures or rules, yet the foundations for the development of the game in its host country had laid.

Breaking The Rules:
Throughout the next 700 years or so, football became a source of inspiration for the masses and of great consternation to the authorities. Edward II was the first monarch to call for curbs on the ‘uproar’ the game caused – and it seems he may well have had a point. What began as a game of chasing soon developed into near warfare, with scores of players forming sides and causing havoc in urban areas as they rampaged through pitches hundreds of yards long. There were reports of serious injuries and even deaths, as well as complaints from more sedate residents alarmed by the disruption football caused.

Country Troubles:
In rural areas the problem was exacerbated by the vast amounts of space afforded to the game. Whole villages would come out to chase the makeshift ball and the absence or rules meant kicking, punching and crushing were all acceptable. The traditional Shrove Tuesday clashes were particularly troublesome. Successions of English rulers and lawmakers issued edicts attempting to crack down on the game, but it proved near impossible to stop. At the same time, the American Indians had developed a beach version of the game – in which players would disguise themselves in masks to evade blame for dangerous challenges – and the Inuits had begun playing on ice, shooting balls stuffed with grass through goals placed miles apart. Football was taking off in many different ways all over the world.

Saved By The Schools:
Somewhat ironically, it was the public schools who gave the whole affair some order. Oxford and Cambridge had accepted football as a competitive sport as early as the seventeenth century, and Eton, Harrow, Shrewsbury and Rugby quickly followed suit. The implementation of rules worked both ways: with Victorian values gradually disappearing, the schools saw the sport as a vital way to in still discipline, while also disassociating the young gentlemen who played it from the lower classes and their street games. Many still considered football too ‘vulgar’ a game for the upper classes, but by the 1899s it was common practice in public school life. As a result, the people’s game began to take shape in the last bastions of the aristocracy.

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