Is the bad client a fact of business or a crutch when things go awry?
If you have direct contact with clients at some point your going to get yourself into a working relationship, which doesn’t. It’s one of those unavoidable things in life—like death and taxes. Few subjects for freelancers generate more discussions than how to work with less-than-ideal clients. It’s simply a fact of doing business not every relationship is going to gel.
You think the project is going smashingly—the client disagrees. The client is gushing because you’ve bent over backwards to keep them happy—you’re dead inside. You pick yourself up by the bootstraps and muddle on to the finish line, or at the very least a point in the project you can gracefully bow out. Hopefully you emerge from the experience wiser and not embittered.
No one is good at managing every step in the design cycle. The start or finish isn’t where most freelancers fall prey to the fly paper which is client relations—it’s all the gooey wibbly wobbly customer service stuff in the middle most need help navigating. A quick search on Google shows there is no shortage of opinions as to how best go about managing clients.
Increasingly, though, the tone has become one of placing fault squarely on the shoulders of the designer—bend over backwards to please the client at all costs, or even to go so far as to say there are no bad clients. I agree, independent designers especially, need to focus on providing positive customer service and not just design services. After all, direct contact with key players is often a deciding factor in a client choosing an independent designer or studio rather than an agency. But to perpetuate a myth there are no bad clients is not constructive. The designer doesn’t learn to deal with the situation and the client continues the destructive behavior, most often out of ignorance not malice.
The good, the bad, and the ugly
There are three basic situations which seem to crop up most often when it comes to negative interactions with clients.
The first scenario is the myopic. The client and designer see the entire project as something unique to their perspective. Neither party does an adequate job of conveying information or ideas. Nor do either of them have the “ah ha!” moment where they understand the others point of view. Despite multiple approaches and best intentions, no one involved ever gets a firm grasp on the big picture and the process is frustrating for everyone. At the end of the day it gets done, albeit via a painful process. This is in many ways the best case scenario. It’s easy to fix with improved communication and at the very least presents an opportunity to learn. You may want to sit down with your client afterward for a postmortem. This provides both parties the opportunity to identify areas of improvement because chances are you will work together again.
Now we get to the most familiar scenario—the Town Cryer. This is the designer who doesn’t really have the experience, emotional temperament, or skill set to deal with negative criticism or differing view points. This designer goes into a project with a preconceived notion of the out come and resists all movement in a direction other than the path envisioned. The client does the same. Heads but, tempers flair, it doesn’t end well. Rather than choosing to learn from the experience they embark on a diatribe to trash talk the client to anyone within earshot.
The last client is a legitimate nightmare. When they walk into the room or their number pops up on caller ID all air and light leave the room. There is no way around it in a polite manner. They are unreasonable, rude, ego maniacs. Contractual obligations mean nothing to this person as they do what they want. They can’t be taught anything because they already know it all and see it as their duty to retrain you because you are just an artist who cares about nothing more than making pretty pictures all day. This client is dismissive out-of-hand of any ideas or solutions you put forth. They devalue your services. They are most often quick to anger and verbally abusive.
Know when to fold ‘em
In any business it’s best to know when to hedge your bets. Learning to recognize a bad deal and when to walk away is vital to avoid the situations which will ultimately become a drag on your resources, morale, and bottom line. Educating designers to recognize the warning signs so they can avoid the situation from the get go, or at the very least know how to navigate the waters, is a more constructive approach.
It’s easy to tell a designer “here are warning signs x, y, and z. Avoid this client at all costs.” The problem is not all designers can afford the cost of passing on a client. Maybe they work in-house or with a parter who chooses the client. Bottom line, you have this client and you have to deal with them. How do you do this?
How to handle business
Whatever the reasons were, you now see it’s all starting to move in a bad direction. Maybe you’ve already slid into the dark place and it’s time to triage. Either way, here are a few things to keep in mind to temper your interactions;
1. Think before you speak. If you have a gut response to something a client says, shut up. Gut reactions are emotional, not logical. Stop, think before you say something which can turn a not-so-bad situation into a nightmare.
2. Don’t trash talk the client—especially in a public forum such as Twitter, a blog post, or email. Venting frustrations to a therapist or spouse—great. Venting frustrations in a medium the client could easily get hold of—not great.
3. Take a time out. Try to deal with frustrating clients via email when possible. Give yourself a chance to compose a rational response without the added pressure of them being there waiting for a response. Besides, you can spew obscenities towards the monitor until you’re blue in the face and the client will never know.
4. Don’t become apathetic. This is tough, but apathy can lead to a lot of bad ju ju. You would be amazed what you can rationalize as acceptable when you just don’t care.
5. Nip it in the bud. Look for turning points where you think things started to go wrong. Learning to spot issues or patterns is best.
6. Honesty is the best policy. Often we coddle clients for fear of losing them. Sometimes clients simply don’t know what they do is unreasonable or unacceptable. They may be coming form an industry where a request you consider unreasonable is the norm. Be gentle. Put it out there. Most often they will respond positively.
7. Don’t be afraid to employ euthanasia. If a relationship really is beyond repair—or the client has become verbally or physically abusive—terminate them. Remember, you are a partner not an employee and you have equal power. Every business you deal with has policies to refuse service to abusive customers.
8. Stick to your guns. Don’t let them push you around. Don’t indulge feature creep. It’s tempting to give them what they want to make them happy, but it only emboldens them.
9. CYA—cover your ass. Document everything just in case it goes really sour and you need to prove what was done, said, and approved so it’s not simply a matter of my word versus yours.
10. Be the bigger man. Remember, you’re not a bad designer even though you may have handled some things poorly. Don’t add insult to injury, be courteous and professional. Thank them for their business, or if terminating mid-project offer to assist them in finding another designer and making the transition. They may have ill will about how you performed, but they will appreciate the fact you kept it professional and didn’t sabotage their deadlines.
Class is in session
Many people tackle the issues by trying to educate the client. I’m not sold on the idea of educating clients. Understanding the deign process and vocabulary comes over time as clients work with more and more creatives. You can’t dictate to someone what you think should be important to them, rather this is something they must develop a sense of on their own. Offering your client a positive working relationship will do more to educate than any thirty-second lecture you could give. Besides, lecturing clients often has the unintended effect of aggravating them and making you appear pretentious.
To look at this from another perspective, it’s often stated those designers who can’t provide a positive customer service experience will garner a bad reputation which will necessitate the designer changing their ways or being forced out of the market. Why then is the opposite not floated as a solution? Clients get bad reputations among freelancers and agencies yet this does not force them to change or exit the market. Instead the designer is brainwashed to think they must accept the behavior. Quite the double standard.
I do think it’s easy to lean on the crutch of a bad client as a way to absolve yourself of responsibility. On occasion, say a particularly horrendous experience, this might not be bad if it helps you not to dwell on the matter.
However, a stance there are no bad clients and the designer is the one who needs to solely bare responsibility of change is reckless. This isn’t the boogie man hiding under your bed and you just need to grow up and get over it. Yes, the bad clients are real. If you have not run into this person count your blessing, but don’t be dismissive of those who have. Design, like any professional requires mutual respect to be able to function. Bad clients by definition establish a master-to-slave relationship devoid of mutual respect.
I would think, especially at a time when freelancers are being battered by a slowed economy, it would be better to empower designers rather than sit back from our ivory towers and place blame.
About the author
Jeff designs print and web experiences for a variety of clients and enjoys sharing what he learns along the way. He entered the industry at the split of web design from graphic design occurred and is now fascinated as the two disciplines are on the cusp of coming full circle to merge into a new, media savvy generation of designers. When not crazy busy, Jeff likes geocaching and consuming copious amounts of coffee. You should follow him on Twitter and Facebook.
Is the bad client a fact of business or a crutch when things go awry?
If you have direct contact with clients at some point your going to get yourself into a working relationship, which doesn’t. It’s one of those unavoidable things in life—like death and taxes. Few subjects for freelancers generate more discussions than how to work with less-than-ideal clients. It’s simply a fact of doing business not every relationship is going to gel.
You think the project is going smashingly—the client disagrees. The client is gushing because you’ve bent over backwards to keep them happy—you’re dead inside. You pick yourself up by the bootstraps and muddle on to the finish line, or at the very least a point in the project you can gracefully bow out. Hopefully you emerge from the experience wiser and not embittered.
No one is good at managing every step in the design cycle. The start or finish isn’t where most freelancers fall prey to the fly paper which is client relations—it’s all the gooey wibbly wobbly customer service stuff in the middle most need help navigating. A quick search on Google shows there is no shortage of opinions as to how best go about managing clients.
Increasingly, though, the tone has become one of placing fault squarely on the shoulders of the designer—bend over backwards to please the client at all costs, or even to go so far as to say there are no bad clients. I agree, independent designers especially, need to focus on providing positive customer service and not just design services. After all, direct contact with key players is often a deciding factor in a client choosing an independent designer or studio rather than an agency. But to perpetuate a myth there are no bad clients is not constructive. The designer doesn’t learn to deal with the situation and the client continues the destructive behavior, most often out of ignorance not malice.
The good, the bad, and the ugly
There are three basic situations which seem to crop up most often when it comes to negative interactions with clients.
The first scenario is the myopic. The client and designer see the entire project as something unique to their perspective. Neither party does an adequate job of conveying information or ideas. Nor do either of them have the “ah ha!” moment where they understand the others point of view. Despite multiple approaches and best intentions, no one involved ever gets a firm grasp on the big picture and the process is frustrating for everyone. At the end of the day it gets done, albeit via a painful process. This is in many ways the best case scenario. It’s easy to fix with improved communication and at the very least presents an opportunity to learn. You may want to sit down with your client afterward for a postmortem. This provides both parties the opportunity to identify areas of improvement because chances are you will work together again.
Now we get to the most familiar scenario—the Town Cryer. This is the designer who doesn’t really have the experience, emotional temperament, or skill set to deal with negative criticism or differing view points. This designer goes into a project with a preconceived notion of the out come and resists all movement in a direction other than the path envisioned. The client does the same. Heads but, tempers flair, it doesn’t end well. Rather than choosing to learn from the experience they embark on a diatribe to trash talk the client to anyone within earshot.
The last client is a legitimate nightmare. When they walk into the room or their number pops up on caller ID all air and light leave the room. There is no way around it in a polite manner. They are unreasonable, rude, ego maniacs. Contractual obligations mean nothing to this person as they do what they want. They can’t be taught anything because they already know it all and see it as their duty to retrain you because you are just an artist who cares about nothing more than making pretty pictures all day. This client is dismissive out-of-hand of any ideas or solutions you put forth. They devalue your services. They are most often quick to anger and verbally abusive.
Know when to fold ‘em
In any business it’s best to know when to hedge your bets. Learning to recognize a bad deal and when to walk away is vital to avoid the situations which will ultimately become a drag on your resources, morale, and bottom line. Educating designers to recognize the warning signs so they can avoid the situation from the get go, or at the very least know how to navigate the waters, is a more constructive approach.
It’s easy to tell a designer “here are warning signs x, y, and z. Avoid this client at all costs.” The problem is not all designers can afford the cost of passing on a client. Maybe they work in-house or with a parter who chooses the client. Bottom line, you have this client and you have to deal with them. How do you do this?
How to handle business
Whatever the reasons were, you now see it’s all starting to move in a bad direction. Maybe you’ve already slid into the dark place and it’s time to triage. Either way, here are a few things to keep in mind to temper your interactions;
1. Think before you speak. If you have a gut response to something a client says, shut up. Gut reactions are emotional, not logical. Stop, think before you say something which can turn a not-so-bad situation into a nightmare.
2. Don’t trash talk the client—especially in a public forum such as Twitter, a blog post, or email. Venting frustrations to a therapist or spouse—great. Venting frustrations in a medium the client could easily get hold of—not great.
3. Take a time out. Try to deal with frustrating clients via email when possible. Give yourself a chance to compose a rational response without the added pressure of them being there waiting for a response. Besides, you can spew obscenities towards the monitor until you’re blue in the face and the client will never know.
4. Don’t become apathetic. This is tough, but apathy can lead to a lot of bad ju ju. You would be amazed what you can rationalize as acceptable when you just don’t care.
5. Nip it in the bud. Look for turning points where you think things started to go wrong. Learning to spot issues or patterns is best.
6. Honesty is the best policy. Often we coddle clients for fear of losing them. Sometimes clients simply don’t know what they do is unreasonable or unacceptable. They may be coming form an industry where a request you consider unreasonable is the norm. Be gentle. Put it out there. Most often they will respond positively.
7. Don’t be afraid to employ euthanasia. If a relationship really is beyond repair—or the client has become verbally or physically abusive—terminate them. Remember, you are a partner not an employee and you have equal power. Every business you deal with has policies to refuse service to abusive customers.
8. Stick to your guns. Don’t let them push you around. Don’t indulge feature creep. It’s tempting to give them what they want to make them happy, but it only emboldens them.
9. CYA—cover your ass. Document everything just in case it goes really sour and you need to prove what was done, said, and approved so it’s not simply a matter of my word versus yours.
10. Be the bigger man. Remember, you’re not a bad designer even though you may have handled some things poorly. Don’t add insult to injury, be courteous and professional. Thank them for their business, or if terminating mid-project offer to assist them in finding another designer and making the transition. They may have ill will about how you performed, but they will appreciate the fact you kept it professional and didn’t sabotage their deadlines.
Class is in session
Many people tackle the issues by trying to educate the client. I’m not sold on the idea of educating clients. Understanding the deign process and vocabulary comes over time as clients work with more and more creatives. You can’t dictate to someone what you think should be important to them, rather this is something they must develop a sense of on their own. Offering your client a positive working relationship will do more to educate than any thirty-second lecture you could give. Besides, lecturing clients often has the unintended effect of aggravating them and making you appear pretentious.
To look at this from another perspective, it’s often stated those designers who can’t provide a positive customer service experience will garner a bad reputation which will necessitate the designer changing their ways or being forced out of the market. Why then is the opposite not floated as a solution? Clients get bad reputations among freelancers and agencies yet this does not force them to change or exit the market. Instead the designer is brainwashed to think they must accept the behavior. Quite the double standard.
I do think it’s easy to lean on the crutch of a bad client as a way to absolve yourself of responsibility. On occasion, say a particularly horrendous experience, this might not be bad if it helps you not to dwell on the matter.
However, a stance there are no bad clients and the designer is the one who needs to solely bare responsibility of change is reckless. This isn’t the boogie man hiding under your bed and you just need to grow up and get over it. Yes, the bad clients are real. If you have not run into this person count your blessing, but don’t be dismissive of those who have. Design, like any professional requires mutual respect to be able to function. Bad clients by definition establish a master-to-slave relationship devoid of mutual respect.
I would think, especially at a time when freelancers are being battered by a slowed economy, it would be better to empower designers rather than sit back from our ivory towers and place blame.
About the author
Jeff designs print and web experiences for a variety of clients and enjoys sharing what he learns along the way. He entered the industry at the split of web design from graphic design occurred and is now fascinated as the two disciplines are on the cusp of coming full circle to merge into a new, media savvy generation of designers. When not crazy busy, Jeff likes geocaching and consuming copious amounts of coffee. You should follow him on Twitter and Facebook.