Coping with Client Fallout

just happened with me today.

You’re totally right when you say it’s hard to let go. I just experienced an awful ending to a project because of a threatening insulting client. I’m just starting out so that was my first rotten egg and it had me doubting whether I was made for the job, if I would be able to cope with clients like this and if it was going to happen often.
I learned a lot from the experience though so at least it was not completely useless and I’m glad it happened with such a small client. But as you say, it’s hard and you have to keep pushing forward.
Glad to see I’m not the only one finding rotten eggs

I’ve seen too many people take this “The customer (client) is always right” mentality way too far. I’m all for trying to keep the client happy, but within reason. Like Kristen mentions above, not all clients are good ones. I think we need to be more open to the idea of cutting loose the dead weight in our client rosters, even if it feels uncomfortable to do so. These aren’t the sort of clients you want to do business with again, nor are they likely to ever work with you again anyway after things have gone so poorly in the latest project. Save your time, effort, and sanity and just let them go.

The craziest thing to me is not how many freelancers go too far in trying to salvage a client relationship, but how many studios and agencies do the same thing. When a freelancer gives up their time to rework a project to make the client happy, it’s their personal time lost. That’s all. But when an agency does it, they’re losing money. I’ve seen agencies go so far out of scope and budget just to salvage a failing client relationship that it actually costs them money to do the project. And in the end, the client never goes back to them for more work.

I know of a local agency that has an ongoing relationship with a client with which the agency consistently looses money on most projects. The client is a well-known global company, so there’s some incentive there to keep them happy and retain their business. The problem is that they are never happy. So the agency keeps saying, “We’ll make it up on the next one,” but then the next project closes out in the red again.

Some clients are really just not worth it. It is indeed a numbers game, and especially for freelancers I think it is important to periodically review those numbers and figure out if a particular client is worth working with at all.

Thank you so much for this article. I’m fairly new to freelancing and had a client I couldn’t work with in the fall that seriously shook my confidence and almost knocked me off my path. The worst part though, is that I realized very early in our relationship that this wasn’t going to end well (abusive, rude, belligerent when asked for feedback) and I actually “quit” the job after about a week because it seemed the client was never happy with my work. I suggested that he might be happier with another consultant. I was lured back in with flattery and praise (I’m guessing I bid lower than anyone else he could find for the project – woops) and sure enough, ugliness followed. I guess the lesson is to trust your instincts, and believe in yourself.

Ugh.

I had one client who made endless revisions, wouldn’t get back to me for days on end, and then suddenly needed a “final” version of the PDF brochure that he could send out immediately. I told him I was going to be out of the office for a few days because my wife was about to have our third child (C-section, breach) but if he had the changes to me by that evening, I’d make sure they were done for him before I left.

That was Monday. My son was born Tuesday morning. I got his changes Wednesday.

So, when mummy and child were napping, I snuck downstairs to finish it up for him and sent it off — even though I’d told him I wouldn’t be there, I couldn’t leave him hanging. However, soon after I got an email back saying that he had sent the whole thing to someone else to finish, and attached the final copy.

I called him up to find out what was going on.

“There was a time consideration,” he said. “I needed to get this done and you weren’t available.”

Of course, he never did pay me either for my time.

The upside is that it changed the way I deal with clients, including my revision policy. I haven’t had a problem like that since.

~Graham

Kristen,

I always knew I wasn’t the only one that did this but it sure is nice to have someone else voice a situation like this. I’ve had it happen a few times in my freelancing career and I’m getting better at handling it but it is hard to train yourself to just let them go.

I had a client a year or so that wouldn’t work with me either and told me for nearly 2 months that she loved everything I was doing and then at the end (I had just started production) said she didn’t and wanted her money back! Since I hadn’t actually delivered anything to her, I did give a portion of her money back (stupid me) but after I learned that as a freelancer, I need to be better about communicating my policies to my clients prior to starting work. I have since added some lines to my quote to not only protect me from these situations but also the client. Such as getting a sign-off on a design prior to beginning production. At that point the down payment has been used and is not refundable. I know I will be exposed to other problem clients but I try and use each one as a learning experience. It’s tough to get by the “The customer is always right” mentality. (I agree with Mike on that) That saying only works in certain situations and should not be taken as literally as it has been.

My philosophy is this. There will always be jerks out there. Use each one you encounter as a learning experience. Remember you should always interview them as much as they interview you and always be willing to say “No”. I know when you’re hungry, that’s easier said than done but as you get wiser, it becomes easier.

@MikeMcD “When a freelancer gives up their time to rework a project to make the client happy, it’s their personal time lost.”

That’s not true. Our time is just as valuable as any agencies. I work from 8-19 hours a day and can only take on a limited amount of clients, and now even have a minimal project budget I’ll accept. I can’t afford to waste my time redoing some project, that’s a couple of thousand dollars wasted every day.

Not all clients are good ones. True, at the same time though it is the service people who often bring the bad in the client.

Over-promising, setting unrealistic expectations and so on. Who’s not guilty of those? Clients take what we say to them literary, but we often don’t mean it that way. And how often do you go back and say that it was you who messed up?

Clients only care about themselves and if you forget about it for a second you are bound to end up with ‘not a good client’.

WOW! That’s exactly what happened to me. I got a referral from a friend who was also working on a side project with this ex-client, the client and I discussed the project, moved forward and when I presented him with a proof, he went nuts and bashed me in an email, ( if you are interested I will forward to freelance switch.) Anyhow, he refused to discuss changes etc.. any further, I extended an offer and he refused everything I was offering, we went our separate ways….. shortly after my friend gave me a call telling me he has refused to work with this guy because of his negative attitude towards everything brought to the table.

I was a little uneasy at first but then realized why would I want to continue working with someone like that.

Three years ago, I worked with a company on the redesign of their website. Because of all the time-consuming changes they asked for, I was spending entire days on this project. This time-suck went on for several weeks.

Despite the fact that they were piling changes on me right and left, they were complaining about the speed at which their website work was going.

One fine morning during a conference call, I lost my temper, and that was the end of my work on this project. They went through two other designers before they got their site to the state that I last saw it in — still not quite finished.

Last year, I met up with a very good friend who had sold her company to this outfit, and as part of the terms of sale, she went to work for them. She wasn’t part of the group working with me on the website, but what she and her husband had to say about them wasn’t very nice. I won’t repeat it here because young people might be reading.

She and her husband told me that the company’s “pile the work on, then complain about the pace of the project” strategy was very typical. So was their not paying me for all the work that I had done.

Okay, that was last year. A few weeks ago, I was photographing a concert. A lady who used to work for my friend before she sold the company to the louts came up to me and told me that my friend no longer worked for Lout Corp. The lady unleashed quite a torrent of bad language to describe the Lout Corp., and, quite frankly, I was surprised. I didn’t know she could talk that way.

The lady’s point amidst all this bad language was to tell me that my friend had left their employ, and had started another company of her own.

So, Lout Corp.’s practices have begun to catch up with them. When my friend left, they lost a great sales and marketing manager. And a great person. But great people can only hang around bad companies for so long.

It’s funny, when this post arrived in my RSS folder one of my clients ended our contract out of the blue without even explaining to me why until I asked him if that was what he meant by his e-mail. I don’t know if this is out of bitterness but I felt like a failure despite working on his blogs and his product descriptions diligently based on what he said.

I guess you can say this post cheered me up. It made me realize that I wasn’t really happy with how things were going with that client and that I didn’t enjoy what I was doing anymore. Like what Kristen said in her last paragraph, his e-mail still creeps back into my mind and it’s up to me to just accept that we can’t please everybody and that there are bound to be better clients out there.

I’ve been freelancing for a year or so now and I can count the “good” clients on one hand. Clients are clients and I try to empathize with their stance but it’s not always easy. Bottom line: as long as the check clears, they’re right.

I can’t agree with this post more. I recently had a client who took over 3 months to OK a design, with all kinds of changes in the meantime and then just before I was to actually begin coding it, redesigned the site himself and said that this was the final version. When I pointed out all the issues with this new design that would hurt usability / SEO etc he fired me for my arrogance in believing i knew more about web design than him.

He took me to court to get the monies paid already and after 6 months the case was heard and the Judge came down on my side, awarding me more money and court costs.

Some clients are always wrong and the lesson I learned from this experience was to listen to my gut. Even from the first meeting, I could tell that this job wouldn’t run as smoothly as it could, but I ignored my instinct in order to get paid. BIG MISTAKE!. No amount of money is worth your sanity.

Been there… done that… and I’m sure I’ll do it again. But very useful information. If only there was some kind of bad-client-warning-system (BCWS). Now we’re talking.

Over-promising, setting unrealistic expectations and so on. Who’s not guilty of those? Clients take what we say to them literary, but we often don’t mean it that way. And how often do you go back and say that it was you who messed up?

Quite true and looking at the comments, it is quite obvious that it has happened to a lot of us. This usually happens when the client fails to realize that it takes two to tango and puts the entire responsibility of success of a website to the developer without giving proper direction or enlisting his expectations. This however does attribute to experience and makes dealing with such clients easier later.

Just went thru this this week…. Had a client who we went to meet, sat for 2 hours, fleshed out wire frames concepts etc. Only to have the “owner” come in at the last minute and say I wanted this … Insert 1998 flash movie splash page….. with a big logo that shines and spins to music… Uh.. this is 2010.

THe marketing department was on a different page than the owners. We get back our web comp to “He HATED it!!!” I never in all my years of working on something had someone say they hated something. Dislike fine, not your style cool, Hate is a strong word.

Then the marketing director asks us to do 1 more revision which i did at no cost and they are like “well, the owner wants to use another company. We have to give him about 80% of what they want and try to build these flash movies into WordPress….. ” We said its best to use this new company then it’s obvious the owner doesn’t respect our time and knowledge.

They then tell me to bill for the remaining hours, which was 2 remaining hours. Sat on the invoice for a month contacted the director I was told 10 times the check is in the mail, i have a copy of it etc etc. To get a response from the owner saying ” we want a refund and there is no check” So not only did they lie for 2 weeks straight blatantly but don’t even respect designers time. Glad this got cut short faster than really getting into the mix of things.

Some people… I tell ya.

I alway try to stay positive when I first meet a client and not get put off by first impressions. But I KNOW this is often a mistake. More often then not, when you get a “bad feeling” about a client after talking 5 minutes with him (or if you get the hurge to count your fingers after shaking hands) you should follow your instincts and just say “no thanks”. I haven’t really been able to apply this piece of wisdom myself often enough just yet. But the almost constant confirmition that my prior bad feelings were right in the end might “one day” help get this fact through my tick skull.

This article and comments will surely help!

Thanks

Thanks for all the feedback and for sharing your stories. I guess it’s, for me, at least, sometimes embarrassing to admit that I work with people who do things like this. As freelancers, we’re told that we shouldn’t have to deal with that b/c we can “pick and choose.” We do, but we also have to eat, yanno?

But the reality, just as it is in life, is that we deal with jerks from time to time. So I figure that the best thing to do is to make something positive out of it, yanno?

Everyone has gotten a bad client once a while. Just hopefully not all the time.

An exceptionally valuable post. Thank you for the post!
keep going on.

Thank you for the very useful article.

Good post & replies I agree with @Matthieu

Yep, unfortunately this happens in business – not just freelancing / agencies / consultancies etc but all businesses can be subject to this obviously.

There is no reason to go over board to retain a client though. I’ve tried this a few years ago and it really does not work. You end up indirectly devaluing yourself. You also open up the “well you did it last time” conversations. You also become “owned” indirectly by the client which kind of greys the position of freelancing anyway. Trying to enforce things through terms and conditions could work but really it is just about being fair on both sides. If the client is not being fair in your mind then perhaps you have not communicated things correctly with them? Some will always push the boundaries though – that is just the way some people are perhaps because they got away with it before.

It has to be a win win scenario for me and that is evaluated and set out before anything starts.

One good thing about being a freelancer and “your own boss” is that you can wish them good luck and part ways when you feel it’s the right thing to do. I’ve seen it many times while working for someone else, you’re stuck fighting to make the relationship work when clearly it’s not.

Funny, I have a client who decided to hire a middle woman, In the middle of the project. This guy decides to change everything last minute twice -So he ask me again to change colors, content and basically I am redesigning the sight again which I shouldnt be unless I charge him a whole new fee. I decide to cut him a break and just charge him $125 to change everything logo, colors content pics what I am charging doesnt even began to cover the cost of my time.

The deal was Id cut him a break if he paid me on time and in full, as his previous payments were slow and very late. Im talking 2-3 month Just waiting for payment. Its the end of april and this guy wants his site finished by Jun1st, well its may 5th and still have not received payment, yet his women in the middle keeps emailing me and thinks im going to converse and do work without being paid. Its not going to happen.

I feel like he hired this women which is really his relative, and not a real worker he hired her to what stand between payment and try and force my had to complete the project. She has no authority to approve changes so I dont see the point of her even being involved.

She cant figure out how to set up emails, and is constantly asking me for help and other advice. He could have paid me more money and I could have done what shes doing but better. What is the point of her even being in the picture at all if everything that she needs to do she has to ask me how to do first, when it is so much faster for me to do myself.

I am really annoyed with her and him and I really want to tell them to f-off