Actor Alec Baldwin recently joined the not-so-exclusive club of celebrities kicked off an airplane (pre-flight, of course). His offense – refusing to turn off his cell phone while playing Words with Friends (exacerbated by an alleged tantrum) – falls in the Josh Duhamel category but well short of a Gerard Depardieu or Peter Buck transgression.

While celebrity status isn’t a prerequisite for bad customers, often bad customers achieve celebrity status – at least within your organization. Sometimes, the right approach with difficult customers can keep them on board and under the radar.

Typically, the goal with any customer conflict is to find a “win-win” solution or anything short of shoving them out the door. The rationale is that very few organizations can afford to dump their less-than-perfect customers in a manner that creates an often vocal antagonist.

So how do you effectively deal with your difficult customers, and when does the extra effort become counter-productive?

A Forbes article suggests ways to avoid them in the first place. But, as you began reading this, many of you already pictured some of your existing customers. You only wish you could avoid them.

The “customer is always right” school of thought advises you to never argue, be patient and professional, listen to the customer, ask what can make the situation right and explain what you can do. Empathize but don’t over apologize, and know your policy but don’t quote your policy. The goal in dealing with a difficult customer is to find an amenable resolution that, in the short term, makes them less difficult. And remember, sometimes just the labeling of customers as “difficult” can influence how you treat them and make matters worse.

Of course, from our experience as customers and in dealing with customers, we all understand that in reality, the customer isn’t always right. That fact alone makes all of the pointers in the paragraph above feel perhaps too “turn the other cheekish.” If you feel you’ve done everything you can to no avail – and you’ve reached the “boot them off the plane” moment – pull out your calculator.

It might be in your best interest to just fire your bad customers, as explained in this Inc. Magazine article. But, as BusinessWeek points out, be sure to do the math first. Determine how much time and money a bad client is costing you, and weigh that against the value they bring plus the high cost of customer acquisition versus retention.

At ABC Signup, we are fortunate to have entirely awesome customers of our online registration software, so everything we know on the subject is second-hand. That said, we welcome tips on dealing with difficult customers – your advice could prove helpful for fellow ABC Signup users. Just submit your thoughts or techniques in the comments section below.