At some point in your career, if not more than once, you will come across the dreaded “difficult” customer. Whether it is on a project or whether it be as a business owner, we have all had them and we have all probably had similar experiences with these kinds of customers.
What if I told you, that there are no “difficult” customers? What if I told you that most of the time, we create these “difficult” customers ourselves? If you think about it, would a customer buy a product or service from you because they did not need it? Would that same customer just be “difficult” for no reason at all assuming that they needed the product or service they bought from you in the first place?
It seems strange that people would just arrive and be difficult? Sure, not all people are the same, some people are more serious than others, and some are more direct and business-like. People are different, and as such, we need to treat each customer differently and build repour in different ways with each.
Customers come to you with an expectation of delivery or satisfaction, and only if that expectation or requirement is not met, will they get dissatisfied, and this dissatisfaction, if kept unchecked, will then grow and grow into what we call a “difficult” customer. So, what if you managed this better, what if you kept your finger on the pulse and ensured that you delivered on what your client actually bought. What if you ensured that you did exactly what you said you would do at the initial sales stages, and what if you kept building a relationship with your client, long after the initial sale was made? Do you think that you would still have a difficult customer?
I would say no, and I would take it a step further to say that there is not such a thing as a difficult customer. There are customers who know what they want, there are customers that expect the best service possible and there are customers who want the best deal for the lowest price, but difficult customers are made by us – the suppliers. It is comparable to the bogey man, or any other scary story we tell other suppliers to warn them about the big bad things out in the world, but we are responsible for creating these bogeymen ourselves.
If we set out to deliver the best solution or product that we can, and make a conscious effort to connect with our clients and not just build, but maintain professional relationships with them, and ensure that our business dealings are not just fair but also ethical, there won’t be any difficult customers, in fact, they would be like the bogeyman, just a scary story of a fictitious character that does not really exist.
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