Sometimes it's better to lose the business gracefully
A lesson in relationship economics
A new client quit on us last month.
She emailed us with a list of reasons and requested a refund on her unused sessions.
Her complaints were specific.
I read them, sat with them and called her.
Not emailed. Called.
A complaint sent by email is almost always an invitation to a conversation the person did not know how to start. If you reply in kind, you have accepted the format. You’ll then spend three emails saying what one phone call resolves in five minutes. And you will lose ground in every exchange.
The call went well. She was polite but direct. I listened, and some of what she had to say was fair. None of it was personal. And by the end, I understood one thing clearly: she is not the right client for our studio. Not every client is.
The refund calculation was simple. She had purchased a 10-pack, using four sessions of it. I took our drop-in private rate and multiplied it by the four sessions she had attended. That is what she owed for the time she used. I refunded the difference.
The logic: the discount in a 10-pack is the reward for committing to the volume. If a client exits that commitment early, the sessions already used revert to drop-in pricing. She paid a fair rate for what she received and got the rest back. No one leaves feeling taken advantage of.
But the math wasn’t the hard part. What’s difficult was resisting the urge to hold on to her business.
A client who is not a good fit will cost you more than the refund. She takes a time that belongs to someone who will stay. She could bring friction into the room. And if she stays unhappy, she will eventually leave (and usually not quietly).
Letting her go gracefully, with money back and a warm good-bye, costs less than keeping her.
This understanding does not come easily in the early years. The revenue feels too important to give back, and the complaints feel too personal. But the math is usually wrong. A client who was never going to work out is not revenue. It’s a liability you have not yet recognized.
The next day, I followed up with her, replying to her original email. I expressed my gratitude for giving us a try, and I recommended studios with a different approach and equipment better suited to her preferences. Her reply was immediate, warm and gracious.
And this week, her spot was filled by a promising new client.
Amanda
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