Freelance Forums

Well, I'm into week 3 with a client who is very difficult and I thought I would share some tips with everyone here for dealing with difficult clients

1) Make sure everything is documented. Alot of difficulties end up arising from miscommunication and misunderstanding. This means taking notes of phone conversations and sending back to client to approve of the minutes you took. Trust me when I say this helps you alot and backs up things that have been communicated that the client might have forgotten.

2) Ensure the client understands entirely what you are talking about. This is especially applicable to web developers. You will be dealing with non-technical people many times and they may pretend to understand for fear of looking stupid. You need to make sure they really do understand, one good technique to use is the ask them to repeat what the requirement is in their own words and make sure that it coincides with what you were thinking

Ok, I was going to write more points, but those are the major ones, feel free to chip in your comments!

These are not really tough customers; they may be demanding and insists on quality; that is what we are here to deliver. To me, there is only one kind of unreasonable customer - a non-paying one!

For #1, I think that it's hard for beginners to check whether everything has been documented. However, they will learn and probably perfect this rule once they finished some projects.

I guess the best and most practical way to document things is write a confirmation email outlining the salients points of a discussion. Even though there is no intention of using the email as a legal document, it can be useful as a reference to each party's responsibilities and obligations.