Back when I was still doing the four letter word thing (work) I ran a business that supplied chemical analysis services.  I had big and small customers.  The usual 80/20 rule.  80% of my revenue came from 20% of my customers.  I can not say I ever had a larger customer that was a real problem.  Of the smaller ones 95% were great people and more or less 5% were impossible problems no matter what we did.  As all my work was done on a quoted basis I would have my people work up the usual quotes for all customers and for the problems I just doubled the amount when I approved the quote.  If you are getting rich all of a sudden no customer is a problem any more.  Of course some problems decided we were obnoxiously expensive and went away.  That was ok by me.

A bunch of my customers had my home phone number and I told them if they were in real trouble feel free to call any time, including Christmas day.  If they had an emergency I would have people available.  My policy was to charge time and a half for emergencies.  I never had a single person abuse that phone number in the slightest.  I and three or four of my staff worked a rare all niter for folks that had real emergencies and you can not imagine the lasting good will that generated.  We got paid well for our efforts and the customer got results he needed badly real fast.

Dick

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