By: Stan Popovich
Difficult clients can have a big impact on your company, putting a strain on valuable resources, and impact its profitability.
Understanding how to manage difficult clients can help you in the long run.
Identifying Difficult Clients
Difficult clients can be emotionally draining for your team members, cost you resources, or slow down your productivity. They can increase employee turnover, impact your mental and physical health, and affect your company’s reputation.
How To Manage Difficult Business Clients
1. Prepare ahead of time: Regardless how good you are or how many awards you have won, it is impossible to make everyone happy. It is important that a business owner develops a good reputation in their area of expertise to buffer the possible problems of dealing with difficult customers.
Make a list of your company’s accomplishments and awards to include in your marketing campaign. Develop a strong foundation of customer satisfaction. That will work to your advantage when dealing with an unhappy customer.
Get into the habit of getting everything in writing. Misunderstandings will happen and expectations may not be met. In dealing with others, put everything down in writing to prevent any problems that may arise.
2. Listen to your clients: Listen to your customers and view your customer service issues through their eyes. Don’t assume that you know what your customers want and always listen to the facts of a given situation. Never argue with your clients and always remain polite and professional.
3. Remain calm: Regardless of how your difficult clients behave, it’s important to remain calm. Your ability to remain calm will be a positive example to others and strengthen your own reputation. You’ll find that you can express yourself more clearly when you do so with a calm demeanor.
Prepare for any surprises. Sometimes, things happen that take everyone by surprise. When unexpected things happen, deal with them immediately.
4. Ask questions: Get into the habit of talking with the people you do business with. Ask questions and make sure that everyone is on the same page. Effective communication with your customers will prevent misunderstandings down the road.
Be willing to admit any mistakes you may make when doing business with others. Your customers will respect your integrity.
5. Suggest a solution: When dealing with difficult clients, you want to find a way to move forward and get to a point where everybody’s happy. Do not get caught up in defending yourself and arguing against the client’s point.
Steer the conversation towards practical solutions. After you’ve acknowledged the client’s frustrations, move quickly to improve the situation.
6. Get help from others: Enlist the services of your employees who could be of assistance in working with your challenging clients. Some of your workers may have the experience and skills of dealing with difficult people. In addition, a business could hire someone who is an expert in public relations.
7. Know when to cut ties: Customer retention is a crucial part of running a successful business, but sometimes, you need to know when to draw the line. No matter how hard you try to find a productive way to move forward, some clients aren’t a good fit for your business. If you continue to hold on to those difficult clients, they’ll do more harm than good. They’ll drain your time and your resources.
Learn to recognize when a client relationship cannot be salvaged, and when a client is taking more away from your business than they’re putting in. Once you decide to cut ties with a difficult client, be sure to be professional.
8. Review the situation: After the situation is resolved, take time to review why the problem occurred in the first place. Consider if any steps could have been taken to prevent this from happening or what you could do better to avoid similar problems in the future.
It is important to learn from your experiences. A difficult situation with a client can be an opportunity to learn and use the experience to avoid similar situations in the future. It could be as simple as setting up better contracts, changing your workflow, or learning to communicate better.
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