Good Clients Go Away

We were faced with a pretty tough client last year and even though we had a signed decent agreement made up front, it took a long time to finish off the project.

Our original agreement was for a fairly short nine-week term, but the expectations were really high. Throughout the course of the project we were almost constantly on the phone with the client. Up to a dozen times a day, evenings, weekends, they were calling us to discuss details, changes, team updates... Granted, communication needs to happen to keep things running smoothly, but sometimes it’s too much.

At the end of our contract we decided to not sign another one with them (i.e. we decided to drop them as clients) because our working relationship with them was strained beyond repair. We committed to go beyond our original contract to wrap up and hand off to a new set of employees the project we had been working on. Weeks went by where we were thoroughly documenting our work, having scheduled meetings with new employees, continuing to discuss the direction and progress that could be made with the product we were delivering, and generally trying to make the handoff as smooth as possible – and we weren’t charging for this time. After all was said and done things took a turn for the worse and, without getting into details, it’s safe to say that we had been working with a bad client.

On the other hand, we’ve also had some really great experiences with clients in similar high-pressure situations and we continue to work with them. We communicate a lot (often after hours), deadlines are extremely tight, expectations are extremely high (sometimes unreasonably), and sometimes it takes months for us to get paid by them. So, the circumstances almost seem to mirror one another, but there’s a gulf between the two situations.

Here’s a few points about clients:

• Good clients know that their decisions can get in the way of progress.
• Bad clients believe it’s your fault for not working fast enough.
• Good clients will shift their expectations as problems arise.
• Bad clients will add expectations without recompense.
• Good clients understand what they’re asking for.
• Bad clients have no concept of the implications of their requests.

But, in our experience the most important part of working with a client comes at the end of the project when:

Good clients go away, bad clients don’t.

A good client honors their agreement and will take at face value the challenges and changes that come up throughout the project. A bad client will blame you for absolutely everything that goes wrong with a project – they might even twist things that went right into things that went wrong. A good client will work with you to wrap up a project and move on – even if that project didn’t turn out well. A bad client will drag the project on and on, taking full advantage of you.

You should learn to recognize good clients and bad clients – it’s tough, and probably only learned by getting dragged through the shit.

Epilogue

We had our lawyer draw up a basic contract that we use with any new clients that we’re interested in taking on. The contract outlines basic elements that help us do our job better, help make the working relationship clear, and basically protects us from getting into a wicked situation where the project really deviates from the original proposal. For example, if a client wishes to make significant changes to the project then we are allowed to amend the contract. Also, the contract states that if the client wishes to not renegotiate then any changes will incur costs over and above the quoted amount.

We had an interesting project come to the table earlier this year and after talking it out with our new potential client we sent our contract and get back to us. I’ll paraphrase their response:

• This contract sucks, I can’t believe how you think you can work with clients like this
• I want a maximum cap on the cost of the project
• I want unlimited revisions during the project
• I want a year’s support after the project is complete
• I want you to make changes during that year (to be included in the cap)

Bad Client

We basically told them to fuck off.