Customers come in all shapes and sizes, they are the soul of every company, bringing with them the problems that need to be solved in exchange for hard cash. So when someone comes with an exciting project, it is easy to get excited thinking about all the possibilities of web design that he can make, without thinking about what the real work will be. In detecting a bad customer from the beginning, it is very important to both maintain our sanity and to continue supporting our business. But how to know how a client is before starting to work with him?
The first thing we have to do is a customer investigation, find out which suppliers have worked with them and what their comments are about these customers. We must also see if we were chosen as suppliers, replacing another company in the sector or knowing the reason for the replacement to avoid unpleasant surprises. The second thing is that we have to trust our instincts, I’ll tell you that a client that is frustrating and difficult to deal with in the negotiations prior to work, will not become the perfect client once we start working with him.
Here we have a list of some worst customers that your business can have.
- The Reluctant CustomerIt is that client who is not open to new ideas, or does not accept our recommendations or suggestions for improvements in the work to be done. This type of client does not look for a provider because he wants it. He looks for it because he has to do it, closing himself in his own idea of how things have to be, without listening to his provider.
- The False ClientThe fake customer is that person (who usually has a minor role in your company) who is looking for the greatest amount of information and guidance on the service we offer. The customer is the kind of person who asks us many questions, questions about the service we carry out, technical consultations on the design of web pages and many more just to expand his knowledge. We must be very careful with this type of clients (if they can be called clients), since the only thing we will achieve is to be unpaid consultants.
- The puppet
It’s a person who serves as an intermediary between the final client and us, it can be only a puppet controlled by the real client. Therefore, make sure you are in contact with the real customer. It usually happens that by working with intermediaries between us and the real client, the intermediary ends up becoming another client, which means that they are two people who will give their views and opinions (different) about the same work. This means twice the time to finish the work!
- The Helicopter Client
He is a client who wants to be around us all the time (flying over us all the time), overseeing every movement we make. Generally they are clients who consider their projects so precious or who doubt our skills as web designers, who need to be watching every step we take in the project.
They are a great alarm that we must solve as soon as possible as we are the ones who run all the risk, since we are investing all our work, time and effort in a project without any guarantee.
