Bill Canady asks senior leaders how much time they spend on unprofitable customers. Engineering loses 19% of its week to special requests that never sell. Finance spends 22% on collections and billing disputes. Customer Service admits 41% of their time goes to low-value customers.
I said, what percentage of your function's productive time in a typical week is consumed by activities related to the bottom 20% of our customers? Well, it was silence, a bit of crickets, then the kind of shifting that happens when people realize the question is real. Engineering went first, 19%, special drawings, one-off tolerances, quotes that never convert. Finance said 22%. Collections, credit exceptions, disputed invoices, the manual work of billing people who pay in 91 days. Operations scheduling said 28%. Expedite, changeover, short runs. You get the idea, right? The head of customer service said 41%. Not apologetically. She said it the way you say a number you've been carrying around for a while while waiting for someone to ask.
