Dealing with Difficult Customers

How to Spot and Handle Difficult Customers

If you craft for profit, you will inevitably run into a few difficult customers. The sooner you learn how to deal with them, the better it will be for your mental health and for your business.

Difficult customers can suck the fun out of your crafting. They will also hurt your bottom line in at least one of several ways: endless design discussions that go nowhere; changes after design approval that they expect for free; bargaining for "your best price"; and lost time that could have been spent with customers who pay fairly.

It's one thing to go out of your way to accommodate customers when they have rush orders or want some custom touches. It's quite another to be taken advantage of. The key to dealing with difficult customers is, first, to recognize them.

In my ten years in the crafting business I have had three customers who ate up a chunk of my design time, gave me a lot of agita and never placed the promised order. With 20-20 hindsight, I should have recognized the first two as difficult customers much sooner. The signs were all there.

Difficult Customer #1

My first two difficult customers were demanding. They were rude. Nothing I did was quite what they wanted.

I was beginning to question my worth as an artist. I fired the first customer.

After four lengthy meetings to design a program brochure, I realized she was incapable of making up her mind as to what she wanted. Every meeting brought new photos and different text. Plus she, in her frustration,was getting extremely rude.

I finally said, "I'm sorry, but I'm afraid I just can't give you what you want. It will be better for us both if you find someone else to design your program." I walked out leaving her sitting speechless in stunned silence. That felt good!

Difficult Customer #2

The second difficult customer really fooled me. I wasted over eight hours on this one before cutting the cord.

It started as a simple business card order for which I don't normally charge design time. By the third meeting it became clear that she wanted me to design a logo for her new business.

I explained that I charge by the hour for logo work and she assured me she would pay once the cards were done and she got her business launched.

Uh-oh; that's the point at which I should have demanded some payment before going forward. She was having trouble getting financing for her new venture and didn't even have the required licenses!

But I sympathized with her plight and trusted she would succeed. Bad call on my part.

The red flags really went up when she started pushing me to e-mail her proofs of the logo.

I sent her reduced versions that would be very pixelated had she tried to use them. She was not pleased.

She continued to suck up my time and, like difficult customer #1 in her frustration, she got increasingly critical of my work. Her business never got off the ground.

For months after, she would stop into my store and say things like, "I wanted to pay you something today, but I forgot to bring the money." I began getting chilly with her and eventually she stopped coming by.

Difficult Customer #3

Difficult customer #3 was a gentleman in every sense of the word. He himself is an artist and was very complimentary of my work. He had ordered business cards a couple of times, so I considered him a good customer.

But then he asked me to work on some bigger projects: product brochures for his water purification system distributorship and labels for his team members. Plus he needed print ads and copywriting.

I spent about four hours working with him on these projects; but despite several follow-up calls, he never finalized the orders. Turns out, he is a very nice man but not a good businessman.

I've decided that if he comes to me for anything more involved than business cards, I'll tell him I hesitate to work with him on another big project unless he pays me by the hour.

Lessons Learned from My Difficult Customers

You may not be able to instantly recognize who will be a difficult customer, but there are steps you can take to avoid them or send them quickly packing.

The clearer you can be at the start, the less opportunity customers have to take control. Be clear on your pricing structure and production time. If they want anything out of the ordinary, consider carefully if you ought to charge extra for it.

Recognize when customers are trying to take advantage of you. You can get some clues from reading my experiences above: rudeness; being overly-critical of your work; any hint that they don't have the money to pay you; indecision about what they want.

No one can take advantage of you without your permission - at least not for long. Learn to spot the difficult customers as quickly as possible and don't be afraid to walk away.

You may feel you need the job but, believe me, you don't need the aggravation of difficult customers.

You don't need the destructive criticism of your artistic talent. On the contrary, you need the time you would waste on difficult customers to scout out the good customers who will help build your business rather than tear it down!