People who work in the advertising or marketing field have gone through a certain struggle when it comes to dealing with clients. For some mysterious reason, most of the clients are hard to deal with and most of those who deal with them always complain.
Until now we’re not sure why this is a common phenomenon; why all clients share the same attitude and same work system even though people who work with them complain!
Since we already have written about types of clients and how to deal with them and we even wrote a letter to all clients, today we are dedicating this article to the clients themselves.
So, if you’re a client, here’s what you can do to be better, loved, and the client everyone wishes for.
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1- List All Your Amends
When you receive the task, start listing all of the things you want to be edited.
Some clients don’t send the edits all at once; the task could take days going back and forth in the editing process because every time there’s a different edit!
The right thing to do here is to check the task carefully and then start listing all of the amendments. When you list them send them to the team so they can work on them all. This way you will be saving a lot of time instead of going in an endless loop of sending and receiving edits.
2- Don’t Sleep On It
Don’t let it take you days just to reply back with approval or edits.
There are some clients when receiving the project or even edits and take days to send their feedback. Don’t be that client because the result is ugly!
When you ignore the project and don’t send immediate feedback, you will be wasting a lot of valuable time, you will stress the team out, which will reflect the final result of the task, and you might miss the deadline.
Interesting Read ➤ 9 Types of Clients Your Probably Worked With and We’re Sorry You did
3- Don’t Misbrief
When it comes to sending briefs, make sure you put everything in there.
Some clients don’t even send briefs and they come with feedback that this is not what they want! Some also send an incomplete brief and then blame the employees for not following the brief!
To avoid all of these problems, make sure that you send out a clear brief that has all of the information and everything you want to be done or mentioned in the task. It will also save a lot of time. A brief is a guide that the team uses while working, so make sure it’s free from mistakes and clear.
4- Have Some Humanity
Put in mind that you’re dealing with normal human beings with a certain and limited capacity!
Don’t stress these employees, put in mind that they have other clients and they might be doing your task and others too, so be considerate. Don’t send a huge and important task and ask to be done immediately or ASAP.
Be a little flexible and always send any request while sparing some time for them to work properly and stress-free.
Related Topic ➤ Your Simple 6 Tricks To Deal With Difficult Clients
5- Respect The Working Hours And Deadlines
These employees share the same 8 hours of work as you do; so, respect that.
Don’t be one of those clients who send tasks and edits after working hours or at the end of a working day! These employees need to go home; when you do that you will be forcing them to work after working hours and more than 8 hours, you might even be forcing them to work on weekends.
So, make sure you send requests at least in the middle of the day.
6- They’re Not Wizards
Not every wish is meant to become true!
Some clients have a common line they say to designers or creatives in general, which is “Do your magic”, “I want something really impressive”, or “Impress me”. In fact, many creatives have complained that their clients request weird edits or designs that are simply unreasonable.
As a client, what you can do here is discussing with the creative team your vision but keep an open mind that there are some things that can’t be done. Listen to them carefully and try to understand their other alternatives or solutions.
Also Read ➤ Dear Client: An Open Letter to Clients from Designers, Content Creators and Account Managers
7- Don’t Let Their Effort And Work Go To Waste
These employees work hard and put in a huge effort; don’t let that go to waste.
When you don’t give immediate feedback or postpone your reply, you will be wasting their effort. Some clients send a request based on a trending topic or breaking news and then they tend to disappear right after sending their requests.
Sometimes this results in the task being timed out! Trends or breaking news goes on for a certain period of time, if the client didn’t approve within this time, then there’s no point in publishing the work!
Also, don’t change your mind right after the team had already finished your request; working on the task all over again means that everything they had already done is now nothing. So be specific and make sure you don’t waste their time, effort, and hard work.
8- Respect The Budget
You work according to the budget you both agreed on.
Many clients debate around the budget and some of them send requests that go beyond the specified budget! Therefore, respect the budget you both agreed on and don’t ask for extras because it wouldn’t be fair to them.
In the end, we hope clients would listen to this and take it into consideration.