Divine Write Copywriting Forum

Hello all,

I need to have a little vent and gather some opinion on how to handle a difficult customer.

I have one customer whom I do Community Mangement (twitter & FB) for, some email Direct Marketing, and some behind-the-scenes maintenance via their CMS (content management system). I put time and effort into learning their proprietary system but it's not that hard once the concepts are understood. He's billed hourly.

This customer is not very good at communicating with me and seems to expect me to read his mind in order to perform all these tasks. None of these things require much input from him, simply names and bullet points for content so I can handle the rest. When he does get in touch he says he wants the next eDM out ASAP but when I draft one he doesn't respond, in some cases, for over a week. I even furnish him with a template so all he has to do is fill in the blanks for me to continue creating a draft mailout.

Consequently, I end up doing very little week-to-week and am struggling to bill even 2 hours out of him when i was expecting 5-10.

Here is my dilemma: I want to cut him off at the end of Feb which is when this competition finishes but he is only my second regular customer and I wonder whether I should hold on to him simply to build up my portfolio and experience. :\

He is nice enough to talk to and is not overly demanding but it's like getting blood from a stone in order to even do the work he wants me to do.

wahhh!


Thanks for listening.

cheers,
Aprill

My advice would be to raise these issues with him. Tell him you're finding things difficult and describe why (being as nice as possible, but still forthright). If that doesn't work, always make sure he knows when the ball's in his court, and find ways to increase his sense of urgency. Let him know the impact of any delays (from a production point of view). Also, don't always be there for him. If you're working on another job and he comes to you flapping his arms around about how critical his work is, tell him he'll have to wait.

If all that doesn't work, dump him (when you can afford to).

Cheers.

Hi April,

It sounds like a very frustrating experience! I agree with Glenn though - perhaps just send him something that lists your expectations of him and the consequences if these expectations aren't met. Lay it out for him and ask him to acknowledge that he's read it, and then, if he continues to stall etc you can decide if you want to drop him as a client.

I hope you get it all sorted!

Krissy

Thanks very much for the thoughts. I will work it out from here.

Hi Aprill

A business relationship is just like any other - both sides have to contribute to make it work.

Can I suggest a service level agreement with your client? Might be a lot of effort for someone you don't get a lot of work from at the moment, but it's something you will be able to use with other clients going forward.

The agreement should clearly outline expectations for both of you, and what your services will and will not exclude. For example, you might include a time frame for responses to each other.

You might also consider moving to a weekly retainer, if you are doing work for him on a weekly basis. That way he has already made an investment and should be more motivated to get value from his spend.

These are just thoughts off the top of my head. Please let us know how it all goes.

Good luck!

Cheers
Susan

Thanks for your suggestion, Susan. A maintenance contract could be a good idea for this client as I sometimes end up doing general techo-dogsbody work instead of copywriting. Maintenance contract, as a term, makes me feel better about that.