Get Rid of Your Worst Customer
Have you ever gotten a request for a quote, or otherwise had contact with someone who you “felt” would be a PITA. Then, against your better judgement took them as a customer?
Recently, I offered my services to someone looking for help with an e-commerce site. After exchanging a few emails, and spending nearly two hours showing them my abilities, it became clear they were going to be “difficult” as a customer. So, I told them my help was no longer available when they finally decided to hire me.
A week or so later, the guy contacted me again. Against my better judgement, I took their deposit and began working. Sure enough, he seemed dissatisifed with every aspect of the work, and every aspect of the e-commerce software.
I felt the software to be used was fully disclosed and encouraged the customer to try the free demo (which he did). Next, I setup a second free demo website to show various functions of the software. The customer had (2) “free” chances to see the software working without spending any money to register it.
To make a long story short — the customer was given several weeks to evaluate the software platform, contact developers and sales staff, and see his own data used in samples on the platform. After all that, he made the decision to use it.
Sure enough, once work began, the customer found “problems” with each mouse click. He tried to convince me he knew how it “should work” and he could convince the developers to fix their software to work his way, (note: the software has 10,000 plus stores using the platform and has been in business for years, but this customer wanted code level changes customized to fit his demands).
Ok (so it’s not as short a story)… the customer had me redesign the store 4 times. Next, he went into the back-end and “tweaked” the design himself. This broke everything and requiring me to fix it. After uploading 100+ products, (descriptions, prices, photos, SKUs, etc.), and assigning each into the dozen or so category pages (with appropriate database changes), the customer wasn’t happy with product display. Again, another redesign was done, with custom changes at his request. It felt as if this were someone who obviously would never be satisfied.
The final straw was when the customer told me to add features to the site, which were beyond his ability. This was accompanied with ”this should only take a few minutes”, despite it not existing with any of the other thousands of stores which use the software. Finally, I said, it was obvious he would never be satisfied. So, my response was ”I could no longer deal with these irrational requests.”
It is said hindsight is 20/20. I remember a friend (a General Contractor Builder) told me: If a potential customer tells you about the last few contractors who caused them problems, run, don’t walk, away from the job as fast as possible.
This “Worst Customer” told me about four ecommerce platforms he had been used in the past couple years, and complained about each BEFORE I ever did any work for him.
If I said almost 200 emails were exchanged during the development, and each aspect of the job was redone 4 times, and in 6-8 weeks, collected $1500, would you blame me for “firing” the worst customer I’ve ever had?
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