The first group we could call “I do not think this is the right way, but it does not compromise my work or the outcome of the project”

The second group we could call “This is the wrong way, if we do this we compromise the idea behind the project”

The third group we could call “Everything is fine”.

When the requests in the first group i always accepts if the customer says “Do it” .
The second group i never accepts because it compromises everything i stand for … including my reputation, and my selfrespect and the project itself.
And of course the third group of requests i allways accept :-)

This way of doing things have shown to be a very good way to earn the customers respect and keeping my own selfrespect, eventhough it sometimes costs a customer or a project. The loss is allways a small thing compared to the other factors!

A friend of mine was recently in the same position as you – he said one book put him on the path to solving his problems. It’s called “How To Be A Graphic Designer Without Losing Your Soul”.

Hope it helps, best of luck with your problem.

One, a prospective customer was using the “divide and conquer” approach to get our company to agree to changing the terms of service for our service to his benefit – specifically, to provide a money back guarantee where one did not exist before.

Some of you may be apalled that we don’t offer a money back guarantee, but our service requires effort on part of the customer for the service to provide benefit. Too many people subscribe and expect insta-profits, without the effort. Frankly, if someone promises you a way to make instant profit, be highly suspicious. Success does take effort of some form or another, and those who put the effort in, succeed with us – without having to resort to scamming, pryamid scheming, or other dubious forms of income.

So, this prospective customer sent multiple e-mails and used our Live Chat system on many occasions to “divide and conquer” – which is my slang term for trying to contact as many different people as possible until you get the answer you want to hear. He browbeat my team with dozens of inane questions and demands, trying to coerce us into changing our terms of service. He even went to the lengths of threatening to slander our company on internet forums because he refused to believe the legitimacy of the company based on our lack of money back guarantee.

Well, his last e-mail, being the 7th or 8th time he had contacted us, the threats continued, and he demanded that we tell him why he should use our service, and continued to try to ‘logically’ undermine the percieved legitimacy of our company based on our lack of money back guarantee.

At that time I chose to respond to him. Although I was polite and detailed in my response, advising him of the necessity for effort for the service to be effective, I lead up to the climax of my response with the phrase:

“we most certainly are not going to reward [our customers'] lack of effort by refunding their money”.

I haven’t heard from him since.

Another issue was with a customer who we just couldn’t please – and worse yet, the problem just continued to get worse with some rather unique issues that seemed to plague only her. She was upset, but unreasonably so. She was mean and abusive to my employees, consumed more time from my staff than any other customer, and then opted to take a problem that I had provided resolution on in our last conversation (and kept my promises to) to the BBB the day after said conversation.

So, to steal a term I gleaned from Alex’s fantastic site here, my VP and I “fired” the customer. In a polite but firm letter, we apologized, and detailed the solutions we took to rectify the situation. And then, we advised that we felt we were unable to satisfy her needs, and would be refunding her subscription fees in full and terminating her account, providing plenty of time to resolve all business with us before termination.

She was NOT happy. Correction, her initial reaction was that of not-happiness.

But two weeks later, a very contrite and polite e-mail arrived in my inbox, apologizing, advising that she felt that we had really improved, and that our services were helping her with significant life plans, and would we reconsider?

We did, and everything has been smooth as silk since.

First, I was clear up front about what I would and wouldn’t do. For example, “I am willing to stay 30 minutes late every day to help you.” I made it a gift to them (I was staying anyway) while setting a limit. No one will respect your limits unless you make them clear.

Second, I was willing for them to have their own goals and priorities. I didn’t take it personally when they didn’t agree with me. I tried to set things up so they could test their beliefs themselves (easier to do when you are talking about how a computer works, I know). That way I didn’t have to tell them they were wrong, I just had to get them to check things out.

Third, when I did have to deal head-on with customer disagreements, I was as professional as possible. “You have asked me if I can do this training for 20% less. While I could do 20% less training, I believe that will lead to failure for your project. I can’t do that.” Usually that worked out; and if we lost business, it was only projects that would have failed and left black marks on our reputation. Only once did I have to say “if you don’t agree with my professional opinion on this, you need to hire a different professional!”

After a few bad experiences in my career, I decided that I would not be bullyed into doing things — or promising things — that I didn’t believe in.

One of the newcomers’ arguments is along the lines of “If I say no to a customer, he might spread the word and then THE WHOLE WORLD will know I’m a bad businessman!� — To which I reply: Always think about the type of contacts that a “bad customer� might have: Would you want to attract them as well? Saying “no� is the best way to stay true to your niche and stay true to the customers you really want to attract.

Talking of extremes: Ryan Carson posted an article about dealing with abusive customers recently. On my blog, I have expanded his notions from the perspective of the coach/coachee relationship: If you look at it closely, in some circumstances saying “no� can actually be beneficial for the client.