Tricks For Dealing With Difficult Clients
Posted November 13, 2007 in Business, How-To 8 Comments »
If you work as a freelancer difficult clients are as common as stars in a cloudless night. Okay, you shouldn’t take my poetic analogy too literally, but still once in a while you end up working for a client who you wish didn’t exist in the scheme of the universe.
But the sad reality is that there are all sorts of clients for whom you have to work because they are an integral part of your work and if you started avoiding clients just because they are “bad clients” or “difficult clients” then soon you would end up having no clients at all.
The definition of difficult clients may vary from client to client, on a case by case basis. But just for the sake of this blog post let us try to define a difficult client using the following characteristics:
- He or she keeps changing the specs of the project
- He or she trusts you grudgingly
- He or she nags you with tens of e-mails even when there is no need to send them
- He or she asks for updates every day even when you have specifically told him or her that you would update every four to five days
- He or she constantly complains that you are overcharging and he or she should have hired someone else
- He or she constantly points out that you could have done better
- He or she keeps reminding you that he or she is looking for another service provider in case you’re not doing the job to his or her satisfaction
- He or she is too busy to provide you with the right information even though his or her intentions are not malicious
- He or she wants to control every aspect of the project even if you are the expert
- You can add here a few of your own definitions of a difficult client.
So how do you handle such clients?
Diligently Document Every Interaction Between You And Your Client
Make it a point that you have everything in writing although when you work on the Internet such kind of paperwork is not feasible especially when the projects are very small and involve just a few days’ work. Still, save all the e-mails from the client and if you have chat sessions with him or her save them too. Most of the chat software and VoIP software let you save your sessions.
Make sure that as you progress, your client knows everything and agrees to everything and also make sure that you too agree to everything. This way whenever your client says something contradictory you can immediately present to him or her what he or she had agreed to in the past.
Develop A Protocol And Then Follow It Strictly With Every Client
Develop a service protocol and display it prominently on your website. If you have a standard protocol and if you apply it to all of your clients it will become a part and parcel of the way you provide your service and your particular clients won’t think that you are being strict specifically with them. Let your clients know that you follow a certain procedure and you don’t waver from that procedure. This way there will be a less chance of miscommunication or misunderstanding. This will also keep the troublesome clients from contacting you.
Develop Yourself As An Authority Figure
Some clients bully you just because you are not a known name in your field. If they know that you are an authority in your field they will run the risk of getting laughed at by finding fault in your work needlessly. Of course this is a general suggestion as I think even if you don’t want to use this as deterrence your image as an authority can tremendously improve your freelancing prospects.
Make it clear in the beginning how much you are going to charge for individual components of the project and how the cost may vary with the changes in the project.
This too can save you lots of future trouble. If you can define the cost of individual tasks your client will think twice before randomly coming up with new changes or unreasonable changes. This will also force him or her to define the specs of the project as clearly as possible and lucidly communicate to you what is wanted and what is not wanted; you can assist him or her by preparing a comprehensive quotations methodology. It is a one-time hard work but it will save you lots of heartburn and time when you come across difficult or capricious clients.
Learn When To Refuse A Project
I know this can be very difficult for a freelancer because we all eagerly wait for new projects because they bring in more money. Rejecting a project is a very difficult thing to do but it is a wise thing to do if you don’t want to end up spending money and time instead of earning.
Never be desperate enough to accept all sorts of projects and then get yourself trapped in an inescapable web of unsavory circumstances; always try to remain in a commanding position because this gives you the much needed bargaining power.
Have a margin to fire client and know how to do the damage control.
Sometimes it makes sense to fire a client if he or she is too acrimonious to handle. This may mean returning the advance the client has already paid you and this further means always having enough spare money with you. This also brings us to the overwhelming importance of having a blog as many companies and people use blogs as great PR tools. Lest the fired client tries to damage your goodwill write on your blog what drove you to firing your client and explain the reason as clearly as possible and hide nothing (just make sure you have the right to do that).
You may think that this will scare away your future clients but why should a right-thinking person feel threatened by your frankness and sense of fairness? Since most probably your readers will respond to your blog post in your comment section this will generate lots of buzz and gain sympathy for you. Here by “sympathy” I don’t mean using manipulation but clearing the air and putting forward your point of view. Of course if the client publishes his or her own blog then he or she may use it to put forward his or her point of view, but then this is the power of the Internet :-).
In the end I would like to add that listen to your client carefully; not all intrusive clients are troublemakers. Some can really help you perform better by giving constructive input. You may not like the tone of their communication; that’s because not everybody is a polished communicator. Learn to discern the difference.
Amrit
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Amrit Hallan writes on Content Blog and How To Plaza. He’s got great experience in writing, copywriting, blogging and SEO.
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About the author: Amrit Hallan writes on Content Blog and How To Plaza. He's got great experience in writing, copywriting, blogging and SEO.
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8 Comments
jeremy
November 13th, 2007 at 12:32 pmThat last one is definitely one of the most important, though hardest to implement. We’re all in need nowadays, but the time you spend working on a terrible project is time you could have spent looking for the perfect project. Provided such a thing exists
Christine O'Kelly
November 13th, 2007 at 5:25 pmThis may sound harsh… but I fire those clients as soon as the project ends! When working for someone else, you have to take crap. But one of the joys of freelancing is that you can choose who you surround yourself with. Making the choice to work only with positive, big-picture, forward thinking people has improved my life tremendously.
:) Christine
KOM
November 13th, 2007 at 11:08 pmI think the problems you are facing are bound to creep up in all projects in one form or another, internal or external. The significance lies in taking advantage of the basic project management templates to soften the blow of them when they DO come up; create a change request form (CRM), a project charter, and conduct a risk assessment and review them with the team.
The CRM will create a process to follow (yeah and some work for the requester, which might make it less frequent and more thought out ) when there is a change in the project. First, you need a project purpose to agree upon what the goal is. The charter should have basic ‘deliverables’ as well as defining what is out of scope. Have the work broken down by task to get a realistic idea of how long its going to take.
Documenting all this is a fantastic way of capturing what the agreed upon ‘thing’ is. It allows you to have an out in Amrit’s instances of flaky project sponsors.
The risk assessment I’ve found to best work in a brainstorming environment where everyone writes their ideas down on post-its anonymously and collectively everyone discusses the merits of each one. What it ends up doing is allowing you to have plans and triggers for enacting them should a risk become a showstopper and derail a project.
Explain to clients that every report you’re compiling as a project update is money they’re spending, and you’d be surprised how little of your time they spend on it in the future. You might even find they’ll stop being so annoying when they realize the lack of productivity stemming from their requests.
Ted Slampyak
November 14th, 2007 at 7:21 amI would disagree strongly with the suggestion that you publicly air the reason you fired a client right away.
I’ve had to fire a few clients in my day — very few, I’m happy to report. But unless the client starts going public about this first, my suggestion is to let discretion rule, and not say anything. I would be hesitant on going into partnership with a person or agency that felt it had the right to air its negative opinions of the merits of others, and it is all too easy for such comments, even if they’re written fairly and objectively, to come across like sour grapes or bitterness. And it sends a message to your future clients — even right-thinking ones — that if you two end up not working well together, they might have to deal with your airing of the dirty laundry. You might know your comments are fair and deserved, but how does everyone else know that?
If you feel you must blog about the experience, do it with the objective of teaching others what traps to avoid. And leave out the client’s name.
Better to hold your lip, whenever possible, and show your future clients — and current ones — that their behavior won’t be your blog fodder.
Susan
November 14th, 2007 at 7:22 amGreat suggestions, Amrit. I ended a project after a week because I was getting phone calls on my home phone around 9:30 at night that would last for an hour.
Sometimes you just can’t teach people manners and boundaries. :)
Grace Smith
November 15th, 2007 at 4:08 amInteresting post, one thing i would like to add is that while i think it is essential to develop a service protocol, it is also important to be flexible when working with the different client types. As there are such a variety client types out there and chances are at some point your going to work with all of them, the trick to successful client communication is knowing how to deal with these types to get the best out of them and ultimately the best for the project.
Great advice on developing yourself as an authority figure! I think alot of freelancers don’t truly believe their worth or have confidence in their abilities, clients can smell this a mile off, so if you dont think your know what your doing, chances are they are thinking the same thing!
Alison Wileman
April 1st, 2008 at 12:59 pmThank you for this post – it has really helped me. I have been freelancing for over a year and can really relate to information like this. Sometimes it is very hard to remain professional when working with a difficult client, but tips like the above – documentation etc and recognising those characteristics in the first instance makes me feel much better equipped to deal with situations like this. I think the thing is, no freelancer wants unhappy clients – we all want to do our very best job each time with great results, but in certain circumstances and with difficult people, it’s sometimes hard to see the wood from the trees – all a learning experience though hey!.
Dawn
January 14th, 2010 at 5:26 pmHow do you deal with a client who wants a full refund? In 3 years of business as a resume write and maintaining a 100% client satisfaction record, I have one of those clients who I think will just never be happy. My refund policy is re-writes but no refunds (to keep it simple, it’s more complicated than that alone). Am I obligated to refund even if I know with certainty I did a great job?