Business Owners Are Worst Clients

Using Claude, I analyzed our shared inbox and email history dating back to 2010 to identify patterns in client terminations. For context, I run a digital marketing agency and clients are generally B2B small to medium sized businesses that are digital marketing clients.

My goal was to identify a pattern on client terminations, what made them leave and what were some early patterns to identify before they left.

After Claude produced said analysis - I did some manual verification on most of the data because this piqued my curiosity.

When business owners were the puchaser and the point of contact - it could be easily predicted that they will go on to become worst clients.

Having been a business owner for over 20 years, I’ve always been struck by a recurring trend: whenever a customer throws a tantrum, threatens legal recourse, or takes things to an extreme, they are almost invariably another business owner.

One would think that a business owner would be sympethatic of other business owners, understand the risks/effort that comes with running a business and always try a non confrontational approach to solving problems. Despite the significant, quantifiable amount of “goodwill” and free work we build into our service to ensure client happiness, this group remains on an entirely different level of volatility.

If you are a business owner - be kind to that other business.