zlacker

Simple: some customers are more expensive to serve than others.

Maybe they use a lot of a free service you provide that costs you money. Maybe they require too much customer support. Maybe they return most of the products they buy from you. I've looked at a few datasets where profitability by customer varied pretty widely, including many that were clearly in the red. Most companies just don't break out their costs by customer enough to see it.

>>rattra+(OP)
Spot on. I’ve worked for companies that have “fired” customers for being more trouble than they’re worth. Generally, it was because of unreasonable support or product demands (e.g. “we need this boutique feature added now,” filing countless tickets for outstanding issues we were working on and had communicated as much to them, etc).

If more companies were forced to pause and consider whether taking on certain customers would cause their workers to revolt, we’d all be better off.