Way back in the late 80s, I was both developer and support person for a stock market data application. This was of course before Internet access and data downloads were done by dialup modem at 600 or 1200 baud. I.e., very slow. The customers I supported were mostly doctors, lawyers and other well-respected, well-paid indviduals because the service was fairly expensive. How do you tell someone otherwise intelligent but computer illiterate how to do stuff? It’s not easy. I bit my tongue, sometimes even blaming myself. Wonder of wonders, they often realized their own mistake and then called up my boss to compliment me. How did I stand it? Actually, I was fortunate that only the year or two before, I had been a teaching assistant for non-computer university students that had to take a computer course for their degree. So I was still in a “helpful” mindset. But I also went out and partied a lot on weekends to blow off steam.

Obviously, that’s not a sustainable way to handle things. So I sometimes imagine steam rising from my head, in my mind. It seems to settle me down. The key thing is to not let the customer lose face. Once that happens, especially with men, you’ll have a hard time convincing them of their own name. You’ll be wrong about everything, in their eyes.

What do you when you have an impossible client?

For instance a couple of months ago one of our clients, for whom we had created a flash banner, was a nice and gentle person during the entire process. The flash banner was finalized, the client was happy and we then sent the client the final files (including the SWF file, the source FLA file and a HTML file with the SWF embedded in it).

The client then called back saying he was having problems with the files and that he could not open the files. So I explained to him that he would not be able to open the source files (FLA) because he would need Flash editing software to do that. Then he says that he was not able to open any of the files.

So I resent the files to him making sure they were all working (by sending the files to a collegues computer and opening them). I get a call back from the client, this time a little agitated, saying that he could not open the files. I started getting concerned because I was postive the files were working. So I walked him through the process of opening the files. To my dismay I discovered that he did not have WINZIP installed on his computer and hence was not able to actually open the ZIP file that we had sent him!

The client did not know what WINZIP was and so I had to walk him through installing a trial version of WINZIP and the unzipping the files. He seemed to calm down and put the phone down as if it was my fault he did not have WINZIP on his computer.

Then after an hour I get a call back. This time he sounded really furious. The files were not opening. So I asked him what files he was opening. He said that he tried to open the SWF but could not open it. I asked him if he could still view the flash banner on our server that we used during the development. He said he could not. I then asked him when was the last time he saw this flash banner working on our server. He said that it was from his computer at office and now he was working from home. I then suggested that perhaps a flash player plugin was not installed on his computer and that is why he was not able to view the files.

At this point the client went bersek and started yelling that the files were no good etc etc. I tried to walk him thourgh installing the plugin but he would not hear of it. He said that these files were not good if one had to install additional plugins to view them. I tried to explain to him that it had to do with how flash works and that any one who wants to view flash will have to have a flash plugin in their browser.

He went on and on and threatened to call Amex and cancel the payment etc. He would hear no reasoning and was becoming quite abusive. At this point I politely thanked him, put the phone down and requested our accounts department to refund the client the $100 he had paid for the flash banner.

I think he later realized how it works since I see that he is using the banner on his website! So what do you with such clients?

Thanks,
Allan.