Frustrated? Say Something!

Finish this sentence: “When freelancing, the thing that frustrates me most about one of my clients is…”

We’ve all had them – Clients from Hell. In fact, I wrote about some of them here and here and here. Just because you have a bad experience with a client doesn’t mean that they are a bad person, though. Some clients may not even understand how annoying they really are. You know how I’d finish the sentence above? “When freelancing, the things that frustrates me most about one of my clients is that he wasn’t happy with my work, but never sad anything.” I’m sure that happened to most of you at some point, and let me say this – it is frustrating for the same thing to happen to a client.

Image: sxc.hu

In my case, I never found out that I wasn’t hitting the mark until I got a mediocre rating on Elance for the project. During every milestone, the client seemed pleased with my work, or at least, he didn’t say anything to me about not being happy. Maybe he thought he was being nice, or maybe he was too embarrassed to say anything to me. Some people don’t like confrontation. At the end of the day, though, it was hurtful to know that I could have changed things from the start, had I known he wasn’t happy, saving my rating average and maybe even fostering a long-term relationship with the client.

But on the flip side of this story is the point I’m really trying to make. When you believe that a client is treating you unfairly or when you’re frustrated by a client’s actions, for heaven’s sake, please SAY something.

We all have those friends. You know who I mean – the kind who are sugary sweet to your face, but complain about you behind your back. They’re also the people who usually complain about things but never take steps to come up with a solution. If you allow a client to frustrate you and never say anything, you’re just as bad as these people.

Furthermore, you’re creating a monster. The client will assume that his behavior is appropriate and will treat other writers the same way. If you want to be respected, you need to stand up for yourself.

That’s not to say you need to be mean about it. When something frustrates you, I recommend shutting it out of your mind for about a day (if time allows) and then contacting the client regarding the issue. You need some time to cool down sometimes, and that’s OK.

What’s not OK is to never speak up. Don’t worry about losing the client too much. As long as you’re respectful and explain your reasoning well, any client worth having will want to come to an amicable resolution. Don’t accuse, place blame, or otherwise antagonize your client – simple explain that you’ve been feeling negatively about something and you’d like to take care of the problem so it doesn’t interfer with your work in the future.

It isn’t always easy to stand up for yourself. I once had a client who thought it was perfectly OK to pay me via paypal after we specifically agreed to payment via check. Yes, it does make a difference – paypal takes a percentage out and it’s free to deposit a check. Some people might say “well, at least you got paid on time,” but that wasn’t the point. It frustrated me that he went against our agreement, regardless of why I wanted a check over paypal. When I approached him about it, he was a little put off that I asked him to cover the charges, but I did so respectfully, and we agreed to split the loss, and he’d pay by check in the future.

Don’t let things go. It makes it harder for other writers, because clients won’t realize they’re dong things wrong. Here’s a good rule of thumb – if the issue is frustrating enough to make you complain about it, you should say something to your client. I’ve lose clients before, but never because I voiced my opinion about an issue between us. Clients worth keeping will respond positively to you, because good writers? They’re hard to find, and they don’t want to lose you anymore than you want to lose them.

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