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April 2, 2018

How to Resolve those Pesky Client Conflicts

Submitted by Kelly Glass

Say it with me: The customer isn’t always right. Shocking, I know! But it’s true. And nothing can make a client angrier than not being right. It’s unfortunate how many client conflicts are born. But you don’t have to let disagreements with a customer ruin your business relationship. Here’s how to manage those customer conflicts and come out on top — without any lost revenue. (Special thanks go to Vanilla Ice for the entirely appropriate section headlines.).

Stop
Take a step back. If your client has sent you a nastygram or a super curt text, don’t reply right away. You’ll probably be annoyed and it’s never a good idea to respond immediately when we’re irritated. Give yourself a chance to cool down. Take a walk around the block, sleep on it, schedule a response for two days later if you must. The goal is to get calm enough to have an appropriate, professional response — not one fueled by anger. Plus, taking a break and coming back later may even give you a completely different interpretation of the email or text. Maybe what you thought originally was not meant at all but was interpreted without context. Like that time your spouse innocently texted you with only “Pick up milk” because he or she was in a rush and you couldn’t help but respond with “PLEASE would be nice!” because you didn’t have any context to the curtness.

Collaborate
This step is twofold. First, reach out to some business friends. Run the situation by them to see if you’re in the right or your client is. Get their opinion on how they would handle things. And then, when you feel fully informed by your colleagues, get together with your client for some collaboration. You’ll probably be a bit more levelheaded at this point, so calmly ask your client to explain why they’re upset. The key is to listen to their concerns before you say anything. Let them vent their frustrations — hopefully in a nice, polite way. And it may kill you inside but apologize for the conflict occurring. Now you can start the path to a solution. Work together to make your client happy. Ask them what they need for the issue to be resolved and come up with a plan to make that happen. If whatever they want is going to destroy their order, tell them in the nicest way possible. And don’t hesitate to bring in a third party to mediate, either. Sometimes having that extra outside opinion is the most valuable thing.

Listen
You’ve heard what your client has to say and tried to work out a solution. Now you need to listen to yourself. Remember to pick your battles. Something they said may really drive you crazy but do an inner consultation and let your intuition tell you if it’s an issue worth pursuing. It’s also important to know when to walk away. If this is a new customer and the first two orders have been agitated disasters, listen to your keen business sense, which is probably telling you to drop the client. See this issue through to a resolution (as much as you can, at least), thank them for their business and then move on. If the conflict was really that bad, you likely won’t need to officially fire them as a client. Let them think they dumped you.

At least you’ll know your clients won’t take issue with the vector artwork or embroidery digitizing of their logos when you use Idea Custom Solutions. Give us a try today and free up your time to strengthen relationships with clients.

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