Problematic clients, every industry that requires human contact

I do a couple of things at the moment and I have done more before. From telecommunications to freelance work, most of the people working with clients have encountered the feared and despised ''Problematic customer''. Come to think, they are universally hated more than bad bosses. At least your superior is predictable, you know him, you have worked with him and you have developed tricks to avoid him or stay in his good graces.

But those one-time(hopefully) encounters with people that just seem to want to make everybody else miserable are the truly scary and annoying ones. Sometimes you have a customer that you think may smash a window, other times it just seems that your client hired you to bug you or is incapable in speaking human.

There are many different instances and situations and I just had my first one on Fiverr.com. This time it was different from my experiences before because other times I was filling different positions. My annoyance was with the fact that I was asked to write ''fun product descriptions'' and after five days of work told that they should be classy after all. I had two days to change everything. But that is not the problem. I work on google docs, I share a link with every customer I have. Anytime in those five days that I was writing in, my customer could have told ''Hey, listen, this is not what we are really looking for, could you direct this into a different direction?''

I have been a call center operator in help desk and a public relations representative before, and let me tell you one thing that I have learned. People like to blame others for everything. They will find a way to shift the blame from themselves to you, even if it will be a ridiculous reason they will use it.

The Problematic customers will vary and the degree of unreasonable excuses and accusations will differ as well. Sometimes the customer is right but mostly the ones who put out their anger do it on the wrong people. The people you see behind registers and folding clothes(do not forget I am referring to all industries as a whole) are not to blame for horrible quality or any other missteps a company has made!

Of course, each situation must be judged individually, but no one should deny that there are people out there who are hard to work with and problematic to communicate to. They also tend to be online trolls and mean people in general.

I will touch on some red flags/tipical behaviors of a ''Problematic customer''

Red flags (actually very similar to relationship ones)

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1. He/She potty moths about his previous service providers. Now, this one is tricky but it is always good to test the waters when the subject of previous work arises. To know if he/she actually had a bad experience or this person just is over the mark picky, ask for examples. How was your previous experience bad? Could I see an example of the work this person did for you?

2. He/she thinks he/she knows what they want. A customer that knows what they want is golden but in this instance think is the crucial word. They will tell you one thing and when the work is done change their minds in the complete opposite direction. Everyone should like a challenge but not an insanely demanding client who sets tight deadlines and has a level of indecision of a toddler on youtube.

3. He makes you feel like you are horrible at your job. This is sometimes the know-it-all. The person that knows your field better than you because they once read a book. If you have a pile of happy clients and one that says that you did a horrible job, chances are you are doing frankly well. It still may make you feel insecure. You should take all lessons you can from this experience, there is always something to learn but do not stress yourself, it is not the end of the world and you are good at your trade.

4. The one customer that never listens. Very amazingly this happens a lot at work where you talk with people on the phone and help solve their problems.

''Are you at the modem, the black box with the name Technicolor''?

''Yes, I am at the white modem''

This is not common knowledge but a router is not the same as a modem and sometimes people just assume things instead of actually listening. It takes a couple of repeated attempts to stir them the right way but they are not always the worst customers, just the ones that are somewhere else in their mind. Those customers are on this list for another reason, the annoying part of them(a limited amount of humans, not all people are bad at this) get angry after a while because you take too long to solve their problems. You see the issue here? They did not listen and are irritated by the job you do.

5. The two-face. This one will pretend that you are doing everything right, they will be polite and insist that you are doing a great job. But the second you put down the phone or deliver a product, they will call again to reach another operator or leave a one-star review. Are they cowardly? Maybe, a little. But I think it is the fact that they are thought to be polite no matter what and for them the term ''constructive criticism'' does not exist. To avoid this you should be a fortune teller. No, seriously, you will never know that they are not satisfied until it is too late.

6. The money-saver. I try to save money on everything, my furniture, my clothes, my accessories. But there is a place I draw a line at. People. I tip overly much in restaurants, I pay people who do their job without asking for any discounts. And there is one simple reason why I do this. What I pay to someone who provides a good service may go into their future and development of an even greater product, it might help them succeed and create bigger, better things. Plus, if the end result is satisfactory, I know they have worked hard. Effort deserves a reward if it is well served.

But there are those people who want to take away from your pay and they will try to intimidate you into giving a discount. Their tone will be suggestively hostile or they will just try to bargain telling that they could get cheaper service somewhere else. To that I say, tell them to go and get that cheap service, it is not worth your time! There are too many people out there who want to get Platinium service for a dime and they mostly do not learn from their dissatisfactions about their orders.

Those customers are also prone to leaving bad reviews. This will be that person who orders the cheapest think on Ali-express and write e review along the lines of this:

''Very disappointed of the quality, it looks cheap and like it could fall apart any moment

Well, what did you expect paying 0.99 cents for ''Apple'' headphones?

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Okay, those are some of the most problematic customers I have encountered in my life. What kind of people have you met? Did you tell them the f-word or were polite through situation?

I try to smile and be nice to all my customers, but I have been curt with one or two(which is not much) that really ground my gears

Have an amazing day, today, tomorrow and forever,
Linda