Blog Post

A few minutes ago, I had a very bad experience with a service provider. For a little over 6 months now, I have been paying them to handle a procedure that would advance my appointment with the American embassy, and so far, I have requested information about how my case is progressing three times. The response has always been the same: “It’s in process,” without details, without commitment, as if they had no responsibility to me whatsoever.

Faced with my angry complaint—the product of months of uncertainty and frustration—the person who attended to me decided to respond “in the same way” I had done. With an attitude as aggressive as mine, they berated me, repeating that everything was in process and that there was no refund. The exchange escalated until I decided to abandon the “battle,” because I was only souring my day, and there was no way to move forward. I thought: this and a scam aren’t very different.

I kept thinking about what had happened. While my aggressive attitude had not been appropriate—accumulated exhaustion and the indifference of that company would drive anyone crazy—the disrespectful attitude of the person who attended me exponentially multiplied my pain as a customer. As the philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer wrote: “Politeness is to human nature what warmth is to wax.” And in my case, I received the complete opposite: coldness, contempt, and disinterest.

Feeling deceived, poorly attended, valued only when paying 100% of the service in advance is something that leads me to reflect: how can a company like this survive in today’s market? The answer is unsettling: probably it can’t, at least not for much longer.

The most paradoxical thing about the matter is that, despite having had a bad experience the first time I hired them, I recommended them to two other people who ended up using their services. I myself hired them again, thinking that that first time had been just an unfortunate incident. Marcus Aurelius reminds us in his Meditations: “That which is not good for the beehive cannot be good for the bees.” Well, this company doesn’t seem to understand that destroying their customers’ experience ends up destroying their own business ecosystem.

Today, a company’s reputation can be destroyed in a matter of hours by going viral, making negative opinions visible on platforms like Google Reviews, X, Facebook, or countless others, where the consumer’s voice has an echo. However, this type of company doesn’t seem to respect its customers’ opinions, as if it operated in a bubble immune to the consequences of its actions.

But let’s analyze the cold numbers, those that every businessperson should tattoo on their mind:

The cost of acquiring a new customer is between 5 and 25 times greater than the cost of retaining an existing one, according to Harvard Business Review studies. This means that each lost customer not only represents income that evaporates, but a millionaire investment in marketing, advertising, and commercial efforts that goes down the drain.

A dissatisfied customer tells their experience to an average of 9 to 15 people, according to classic consumer behavior research. In the digital age, that number multiplies exponentially. A negative review on Google can be seen by hundreds, even thousands of people. A viral tweet can reach tens of thousands. And as Warren Buffett said: “It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it.”

A satisfied customer, on the contrary, becomes an invaluable asset: they generate recommendations, repeat purchases, tolerate occasional errors better, and cost significantly less to maintain. Peter Drucker, the father of modern management, stated: “The purpose of a business is to create and keep a customer.” Not to sell a product, not to invoice once: to create and keep.

When a company forgets this fundamental principle, when it treats its customers as disposable transactions instead of valuable relationships, it is signing its own business death sentence. Aristotle taught us that “excellence is not an act, but a habit.” Similarly, poor customer service is not an isolated incident: it is a symptom of a sick business culture.

Let’s do a simple exercise. Suppose a company has 100 active customers. If it mistreats 10 of them (only 10%), and each of those dissatisfied customers talks to 10 more people, that’s already 100 additional people who have a negative perception of the company. If half of those people were considering hiring that service, 50 potential customers have just evaporated.

But there’s more: those 10 dissatisfied customers will not only not return, but they represent all the money they would have spent in the future. If each customer spends $1,000 per year and has a life cycle of 5 years, each dissatisfied customer represents $5,000 in lost revenue. Ten dissatisfied customers = $50,000 in future losses.

And we still need to account for the most devastating cost: the opportunity cost. While that company dedicates time and energy to addressing conflicts, complaints, and reputation crises, its competitors are innovating, improving, and capturing market share. As Sun Tzu said in The Art of War: “The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.” In the business world, the best strategy is not having to fight to recover lost customers, but to keep them satisfied from the beginning.

Now, to err is human. All companies make mistakes, face crises, or have moments where they fail their customers. The difference between a company that survives and one that disappears lies in how it handles those situations. Benjamin Franklin wisely observed: “Experience is a dear teacher, but fools will learn at no other.”

If your company has failed a customer, here is a path to redemption:

1. Acknowledge the error without excuses or justifications

Nothing angers a customer more than feeling that the company minimizes their pain or blames external factors. A simple “I understand your frustration and you have every right to feel upset” can disarm initial hostility. Socrates taught us that “the wise man knows that he knows nothing.” In customer service, the wise one is who acknowledges when they were wrong.

2. Listen actively before responding

Many times, the customer just wants to feel heard. Ask: “What do you need from us to feel that we have resolved this?” This simple question can transform an enemy into an ally. Carl Rogers, humanistic psychologist, stated: “When someone really listens to you without judging you… it feels damn good.”

3. Offer compensation proportional to the damage

If the customer paid for a service they didn’t receive, offer partial or full refund, a significant discount on the next service, or added value that exceeds the initial expectation. It’s not about “buying” the customer’s silence, but about demonstrating with actions that you value their relationship. As Ralph Waldo Emerson said: “What you do speaks so loudly that I cannot hear what you say.”

4. Proactively communicate progress

If you promised a solution, don’t wait for the customer to ask. Get ahead of it. Send weekly updates, daily if necessary. Show that the case is a priority. Transparency generates trust, and as Louis D. Brandeis pointed out: “Sunlight is the best disinfectant.”

5. Implement systemic changes, not temporary patches

If the problem was caused by a deficient process, change it. If it was due to lack of staff training, train them. If it was due to lack of resources, allocate them. A customer who sees that their complaint generated a real improvement in the company not only forgives: they become a brand evangelist. Heraclitus proclaimed that “the only constant is change.” Companies that don’t change to improve are destined to disappear.

6. Transform the detractor into a promoter

Once the problem is resolved, ask for feedback. “How did you feel about the solution we offered?” If the customer was satisfied, invite them to share their recovery experience. Interestingly, customers whose complaints were well handled tend to be more loyal than those who never had problems. It’s the service recovery paradox.

In my particular case, that company lost not only a customer who had paid for two services and recommended two other customers (4 transactions in total), but gained an active critic who, although I omit their name in this article, will not hesitate to warn others about my experience in private conversations.

Contemporary philosopher Alain de Botton wrote: “We treat with brutal indifference those on whom we depend for our happiness.” Companies often treat with brutal indifference precisely those customers on whom they depend for their survival.

Each customer is a long-term investment. It’s a stream of future income, a source of referrals, a potential brand ambassador. But they’re also a human being who deserves respect, dignity, and honesty. When a company forgets this fundamental truth, when it reduces its customers to numbers on a spreadsheet or transactions in a system, it loses something more than income: it loses its soul.

The real cost of a customer is not measured only in what they pay for a product or service. It’s measured in:

• Customer Lifetime Value: Everything they would have spent in the future.
• Replacement cost: What it costs to acquire a new customer to compensate for the loss.
• Negative multiplier effect: All the people that dissatisfied customer will negatively influence.
• Opportunity cost: The time and resources invested in putting out fires instead of growing.
• Reputational damage: The long-term impact on brand perception.

On the contrary, the value of a satisfied customer includes:

• Recurring purchases: A constant and predictable income stream.
• Organic referrals: Free and highly effective marketing.
• Error tolerance: A cushion of goodwill for when things don’t go perfectly.
• Constructive feedback: Valuable insights to improve products and services.
• Brand evangelization: Passionate advocates who promote your company without being asked.

Confucius taught more than 2,500 years ago: “Wherever you go, go with all your heart.” In the business context, this translates to: treat each customer as if they were the only one you have, because in the digital age, that customer has the power to make or break your business with a single review, a single comment, a single shared story.

The question every company must ask itself is not “how much do we earn from this customer?” but “how much do we lose if we mistreat them?” And the answer, as we have seen, is: much more than most imagine.

The true cost of a customer is not in their pocket. It’s in their trust, in their loyalty, in the words they will say about your company when you’re not present. And that cost, as Oscar Wilde well knew when he stated that “nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing,” is incalculable.

Is your company correctly calculating the cost of losing a customer? Or does it continue treating people as disposable transactions? The answer to these questions will determine whether your business thrives or becomes one more of the thousands of companies that disappear each year, never understanding why.