If you work in the digital communications world, you’re probably nauseated by the endless jokes, memes, and snarky complaints about “bad clients.”
According to the legends, bad clients—which constitute approximately 100% of all clients—lack knowledge in every regard, make very vague remarks and request (likely because they have no idea what they want), expect your project to be done yesterday, and are, of course, always prepared with another round of modifications to your work.
“Can you make it POP more?”
“Can you make it warmer, but bluer?”
“Great, just whip up a design in the next hour!”
The common wisdom for dealing with these clients is to try to stand your ground, create boundaries, learn to say no, and avoid scope creep. I want to challenge some of these seemingly wise notions. While it is very important to maintain some level of boundary for your own health, this hyper-defensive mindset is not conducive to a successful working relationship. Like with any relationship, a professional relationship only operates successfully under trust. If you enter into one with the presumption that they are going to hurt you, so to speak, both parties will end up dissatisfied and misunderstood.
Ultimately, you should aim to establish a relationship where:
- The clients trust that you will produce what they want (even if they don’t know what they want)
- You trust that they know more than you about their industry.
If you constantly find yourself dealing with “bad clients,” odds are it’s not them—it might be you. Here are a few guidelines to improve your working relationships.
1. Set clear expectations
This is the most important consideration of all. Be sure to communicate to the client exactly what you will be delivering and when. You won’t “have something for them in a few days,” you will “have a first draft with two variations by Wednesday morning, after which you will meet to discuss further changes to be made by Friday.” The clients are paying you, which means they don’t want to be left in the dark about progress. If they contact you first about the state of a project, it's because you didn’t set a clear enough expectation on when to receive a deliverable.
In conjunction, make sure you are punctual and meet your own deadlines—so set them realistically. There’s nothing worse than working with someone unreliable.
2. Take nothing personally
The work you produce for clients is not self-expressive art. Unless you are commissioned specifically for an aesthetic that you specialize in; avoid interjecting a personal style into your work. Your aim should be to remove yourself from the picture so there’s room to realize the needs of the user and the client.
Therefore, if you receive criticism of an aspect of your work, don’t take it as a personal attack on your ability. Rather, try to empathize with the client’s needs. Does your work accurately communicate the target you discussed? Did you ask enough questions to extract the client’s intention for the project? If you believe you have, you either didn’t sell your solution effectively, or you were simply wrong. Selling a solution is an art form in and of itself. This is a topic for a future blog post, but in summary: you should always restate the original problem, lay out quantifiable research about the target demographic, then finally present your solution and show how it addresses the problem based on the research.
3. Be willing to admit when you are wrong
As mentioned, it’s possible that you can arrive at the wrong solution. If you believe you have taken all the preemptive steps to develop an appropriate solution, yet it still falls flat with the client, there’s a chance that the client is seeing something that you aren’t. Too often as designers, we get caught in the laboriousness of our work and assume that just because we worked hard on something, or employed a complex technique, that it automatically qualifies it as a good solution. Clients, and users for that matter, see the end product at face value. No matter how rigorous of a technique you use or how much you personally admire the aesthetic, the viewers simply see the image for what it is and intercept whatever it communicates.
Therefore, be willing to admit when you are wrong, and avoid getting defensive. Situations like this are a good opportunity to show your client that you’re willing to hear their concerns and make adjustments accordingly.
4. Simply put, be someone you’d want to hire
There’s a common sentiment going around that if you’re wearing too many hats or doing more than you are asked of, that this is somehow a weakness of character. Yes, it is true that you can easily be taken advantage of if you’re willing to do absolutely anything at any time, but this is where managing expectations comes into play. You can be extremely useful to a client and still be in control at the same time if you clearly lay out your intentions. Don’t let the client be first—beat them to the punch. Try to hear what their needs are and take the initiative to construct a plan of action.
Again, it is simply a matter of empathizing with the client’s needs. If you were working in a group project, would you want to be partnered with someone that leaves you clueless as to what they’re going to do after your meetings? Or do you want to work with someone who takes the initiative on responsibilities and lays out a clear timeline for accomplishing them?
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