How do you deal with clients who are driving you crazy?

[Auggie]

Oh yeah. Find new clients. Right.

Maybe I need a vacation.

[Lionessa]

1. From when I had clients...

I only ousted two clients. Basically I had to figure if they were costing me more than I profited from their business. Only two ever did; one hated that I brought my teen son and huge german shepherd (gentle but huge) to the shop and would rage about it for 1/2 hour every time he came in. He only purchased about $50 a month, so wasting 2 hours + a month, he wasn't worth it, the other was a really nice fellow, but he would call every 15 minutes to see if his job was done early even if he had been given a date 48 hours away. Nice but even after explaining a couple or three times, he continued to just keep calling so I finished his project and recommended my competitor for future projects.

Otherwise, I try to just focus on the project and no other issues like religion or politics. It was really hard for me to keep my mouth shut sometimes though.

[Phentex]

2. There's a couple of kinds of crazy...

one is the kind who schedules and reschedules and cancels at the last minute and then reschedules only to then not show up at all. This only goes so far before they get a no show fee OR dropped from the schedule.

Another kind is the kind involving money. If they won't work out a payment plan and follow it, they are dropped from the schedule. I often want to ask them if they go to the grocery store and ask the manager if they can pay next month and see if the manager will agree to give them the groceries. Then there are those who want a new, updated statement on a moment's notice and act like you should drop everything to spend 30 minutes reviewing and explaining it all to them. I'm not sure on what planet that actually happens

For the most part we work with really wonderful people. So the very few duds aren't that hard to deal with.

[Cronkite]

3. I don't know about "drive me crazy" but sure did waste my time...

Two people recently. It was a good (but expensive) learning experience.

1) One guy that is just "out there". I quoted a fixed fee for a service that SHOULD take roughly 6 hours. I finally had to tell him to stop calling me unless he was ready to complete the project. I budgeted 6 hours for it and already have that many hours in phone calls.

2) This woman calls me up with a huge mess. I made the mistake of outlining everything that was wrong and what I was going to do to fix it. I needed to tell her this so she could do some work cleaning it up. I haven't heard back from her, I suspect she has decided she can fix it herself. The "problem" is I didn't go into specifics on how to fix it. She might call me back later with a bigger problem than she had originally.

[Awknid]

13. I get your 2nd problem a lot

People often only want free advice.

[Broderick]

4. lol

Sometimes a vacation will suffice.

[trishnikolic]

5. How to Deal with Clients

A happy client is the best opportunity to show your interpersonal skills. Try to win him over and I am sure he will never leave you coz he will come to know that you value him or her a lot. Make sure that you listen actively to his problems or complaints, and resist the urge to interrupt or solve the problem right away.

[grantcart]

6. if they are demanding more service than the other clients you need to charge them a surcharge.

If they stay with you then you will be making a higher profit from them and you might then find them more appealing.


Or they may leave, giving you more time to make a profit with clients in your wheelhouse. The good news is that they will go to your competition and drive him craxy too.

[staffjam]

7. suck it up

Clients are looking for the best deal and work and will continue pushing, pushing, pushing. Our advertisers are sometimes a nightmare.

[GMR Transcription]

8. Few parameters that can be kept into consideration while dealing with the clients like such.

In any Business organization, one has to deal with the number of clients who comes to you with a huge, complicated assignment and proceeds to be a gigantic pain in the rear about it. The do activities like they will start not responding to the phone calls or emails or sometimes they would ask for the doing changing in the designs as per the change in their mind.
But being an employee of any business setup, all you need is to be patient and keep your client happy. Listen up their demands and try to fulfill them. There are several ways that can help you to deal with your clients like:-
•You should give the clients what they are asking for. The presentation key does matters a lot to them. The key how you present your work and your ideas in front.
•Be very much clear about the out-of-scope work. Try to make them clear that what they are asking for is difficult to accomplish. Be specific about the project deliberative and its outcomes.
•Do not enter into any solid terms and conditions agreement in the event of the work.

[Auggie]

9. Solid advice. Thanks.

[IDoMath]

10. I've always said my job would be a lot easier without clients.

When I opened my first law office I had a client that nearly broke me. Since we had to close due to basic failure as a business, I'll never really know if he would have. I just know that he made he happy I was throwing in the towel. He would call every morning and waste 45 minutes of my time. I learned to stop answering the phone. To this day I cringe when the phone rings,

However, I was able to bounce from that back to my previous career, software engineering, and I realized that I was really a lot happier there. No matter how bad my clients get in software, I consider a challenge to manage them instead of dreading them.

So, in the end, if you love your work to start with, bad clients are manageable. If you don't, good clients become bad clients really quick. If that happens, you need to consider a change.

[mahina]

11. Really, really good advice.

Thank you.

By the way I am pm'ing you regarding a project I'm thinking about, in case you are interested.

[bettyellen]

12. I consult the book "Working with Difficult People" to try and get perspective, and then I find a

local dog run to get some puppy therapy, or meditate.

[Awknid]

14. I'll have to get that book!

[Michael_wood]

15. Problems Will Occur

You are running a business and reality is that problems will occur, people will complain still business will move forward. This is the nature of business--especially when you are dealing in customer services.

[mackerel]

16. All my clients are crazy prior to walking in our doors. I always say they wouldn't be my clients

unless they were crazy. LOL