How to Prevent Problems With Clients Before They Arise

RCS Influencers from SA Roofing say that asking potential leads the right questions from the start can prevent future conflict. 

This is a hard topic for people as no one wants to lose clients. When a lot of us entered the workforce, all we heard was, “The client is always right.” We know that they are not always right. We have seen clients verbally abuse employees, not pay their bills on time or at all, and sometimes there is a client who consistently takes advantage of services and looks for loopholes. These are all reasons we may decide to walk away from a project or “fire a client.” If working with a certain client is going to cause our employees or company more harm than good, we will not continue down that path.  

In order to avoid this situation from the start, we try to ask questions upfront to determine if we even want to start a professional relationship with someone. Sometimes we will turn down bidding on a project because we don't feel that they fit our business model, or we see some red flags in the beginning. We are a small business, and our time and resources are precious as we are in a growing period, so we will choose not to work with every potential lead. 

If you have a bad client, start with a phone call to whoever the issue may be with. Keep it light and offer space for them to voice their concerns. If a phone call does not resolve the issue and it continues, send an email so that you can document what has been happening. You may also choose to bring in other vendors or businesses at this point depending on the circumstance. 

If more issues arise or if you are no longer able to professionally deal with the client, give them a call to let them know you are no longer able to service them. It is nice to try and refer them to a different contractor who might be able to better serve them, but walk away. If you are still in a contract with them, hold up your end of the deal and finish what needs to be done. Moving forward you can assign the account to another team member so that you can protect everyone from possible hostility and shield your employees. 

We know this is a hard situation to be in, for everyone involved, so we hope this gives you some ideas for how to proceed while protecting your business and employees. 

Simply Affordable Roofing is owned and operated by Chris & Kendall Ekerson and Brandon & Nalani Smith. See their full bios here.