How do you handle a difficult customer as a freelancer?
Hey everyone ! First and foremost, happy new year ! My question is pretty straight-forward. But I also would like to add, how do you disarm unhappy customers/client so that it won't damage your reputation? As a freelancer, I think reputation is the currency and personally, I think one bad milk can spoil the rest. So, I am looking into advice, techniques and tips dealing with unruly customer. Thanks in advance
Personally I just try to finish the project as quickly and to their requests as possible and then end the relationship.
The hard part is when you are over budget and losing money to wrap up their project. You just have to determine if it's worth the cost to wrap it up completely or not.
I had a client who had paid us about $70K, we did a ton of work for them on a project but they kept changing the target and started fighting us on the extra costs. It's the only client I cut cold turkey and fortunately nothing bad came out of it beyond losing a client.
I'm a designer and one trick I have heard with clients that are always picky and you just can't finalize the design is to stick a big red blob someplace on the design. The client will focus on it and say everything looks good except the red blob, remove it and we are done. :)
@macchiata Unless you have a bad relationship, they probably aren't going to go around bad talking about you or putting up bad reviews someplace online. If you have completed the tasks you have been given and the payments have been relevant to the work you have done. (i.e. you haven't been paid more than for the time you have put in). then I'd just say, "It's been a pleasure working with you, however I don't feel like I am the best fit to continue working on this project. I'd be happy to give you recommendations of others who may be able to help instead. Thank you."
@micahiverson Thanks for the recommendation ! Will keep that in mind for next time if I am dealing with this situation again, hopefully not.
Reputation is important, but your mental health and creative energy is a thousand times more important and spoils the work on your other clients. A bad client will eat you from the inside, they're unhappy, you're unhappy, just get comfortable with the idea you can't please everyone and let them go.
But the "exit" strategy depends on why they became a bad client, it can be them being unreasonable demanding, it can be you failing to deliver what promised, on time or not communicating properly. Quite often it's a mix.
Just try to do your best first, deliver what you agreed. If that's not possible, offer them a full or partial refund.
My situation is that the client gives me " great job" with additional " but." I would say it's the mixture of unreasonably demanding and not communicating properly. I deliver what is agreed upon even more than I should.
I would rather offer a partial refund, given I've spent my time working on it and finished the project. Albeit, I am slightly skeptical if the client agree with the idea.
I'd back up alot of what @micahiverson and @stefanolaru have said.
I've found it helps to set an exit strategy. I've used the "My schedule is starting to get really full but I want to make sure I have enough time for you" approach.
Frame what they are looking for and get it down in writing and do just the agreed amount of work and what was asked for. You have it in writing to refer back to. Your schedule is starting to fill up so you don't have a lot of time at the moment. If they still want it you can make time in X weeks type thing. Offer them the source code if they want to take it. I wouldn't be fast offering a refund of any kind if I had done the work they asked for.
Don't worry about your reputation. As @micahiverson pointed out they aren't likely to bother bad mouthing you and you would never use them as a recommendation anyway so I wouldn't worry too much. We all have those bad ones. It gives us stories for the ted talk !! :D
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