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Polite ways to handle impossible to please customers


csnet1

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Hey Fellow Fiverr community,

Most of the time, at least from my experience we meet great people who know what they want, are already professional in what they do and simply want an expertise of someone specialised in specific field. These communications are usually flawless, even the most demanding tasks get completed and it spread via word of mouth to others.

At least, this is what makes this community great.

However, I would like to ask for your opinions on some different, minority of buyers who simply do things that are hard to believe.

Recently, I had a customer who was like:

  • “Hey Mate, I am an expert in Linux, but spent two days trying to solve some database problem without luck”.
  • Ok, I said, give me SSH i will take a look
  • Not too surprisingly, I found he migrated database version leaving some extra fields that are removed in the new version in system tables probably by forcing a dump to load.
  • The cheapest gig I offer for this type of problem (unknwn) is rated $400
  • I asked him, ok I found what the issue is about, would you like me to send a basic gig offer and provide you with a solution.
  • Do it bro, he said.
  • I sent an offer (making a crucial mistake by providing a problem solution in description)
  • He started screaming “This is insane, you are charging $400 for 15 minutes job”
  • To which I replied:

No, it’s not a charge for 15 minutes job, I am charging $400 for 15 years spent in the industry so you don’t have to spend two more days as an expert trying to solve it and come back.

Eventually, I told him, here’s an offer at the half or price $200 - since you probably did not bother to read the price of gig, if you are satisfied with the results pay, if not - you don’t have to pay anything.

  • He stated he is fascinated, but he is a poor man, asking to send $30 via PayPal - which of course I rejected telling him he owes nothing. And he paid nothing, but never mind.

Another case:

  • Customer starts with a very well defined set of tasks he wants to be done. He gets an offer.
  • Then he starts negotiating the price, but at the same time adding more and more to his request, basically leading to “Build me a house” approach.
  • We spent a couple of hours talking, he was like “I hired another company to do this for me for like $20 can you match their price”
  • Asking why he is not in communication with that company, he was like “I want a pro”
  • Ok so you want a PRO that matches the price of someone who doesn’t even want to talk with you or explain the methodology used.

I politely told him:

I am sure they have their pricing as a company, the same way I have mine. I already dropped you the pricing, and can’t go any further with this, nor to match the price of others.

You can definitely go and buy Fiat car for $5000 - it will work, but you can also buy BMW for 30.000 and it will work better. Of-course, there’s a new model of Ranger Rover priced about 120.000 with a full equipment and it will surely and securely take you whenever you want.

Of-course, if you end up with a fault, you will have to wait 30 days for servicing your Fiat and pay extra, while you can get a Range Rover mechanic come on field and fix it for you for free.

How do you handle this types of customers?

What I find for them to have in common is messages such as:

  • “Are u There” - if you don’t respond within 15 seconds.
  • “Why U R not responding to me” - if you don’t respond in 30 seconds 🙂

Overall, how do you approach to energy vampires who are convinced this is a slave market. At one side, it’s important to demonstrate PRO level of communication even to them, but on the other side, if you have like 3 orders in queue from a normal people / companies businesses and trust they put into your hands that are paying thousands, giving you a root permissions to their corporate networks, while you are just wasting their time while discussing with someone who thinks he can get buy a slave for $20 on Fiverr.

Usually this type of person does not even read what you write, or read partially what he likes to hear - and pushes what he want even if politely asked to search the community of many talented people for these that may better suit his need.

Do you have such situation and how do you approach to them? I believe maintaining a PRO level of communication is crucial so you can’t just block it, but then again there must be a scenario to politely escape endless communication with someone who is bored, think of this place as a Slave Market, or even something worse 🙂

Don’t get me wrong, 98% of contacts I receive are totally normal people, but these 2% can quickly consume more time that 98% of these who usually converts to paying customers.

Looking forward for opinions of others, since the conversion rate matters - but quality as well for these who already ordered.

(Quick Note: This is in regards to Fiverr PRO - where it’s expected to have a bit detailed initial conversation since the tasks are not trivial, nor the gig price, not to mention it’s mostly businesses who buys )

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Hey Fellow Fiverr community,

Most of the time, at least from my experience we meet great people who know what they want, are already professional in what they do and simply want an expertise of someone specialised in specific field. These communications are usually flawless, even the most demanding tasks get completed and it spread via word of mouth to others.

At least, this is what makes this community great.

However, I would like to ask for your opinions on some different, minority of buyers who simply do things that are hard to believe.

Recently, I had a customer who was like:

  • “Hey Mate, I am an expert in Linux, but spent two days trying to solve some database problem without luck”.
  • Ok, I said, give me SSH i will take a look
  • Not too surprisingly, I found he migrated database version leaving some extra fields that are removed in the new version in system tables probably by forcing a dump to load.
  • The cheapest gig I offer for this type of problem (unknwn) is rated $400
  • I asked him, ok I found what the issue is about, would you like me to send a basic gig offer and provide you with a solution.
  • Do it bro, he said.
  • I sent an offer (making a crucial mistake by providing a problem solution in description)
  • He started screaming “This is insane, you are charging $400 for 15 minutes job”
  • To which I replied:

No, it’s not a charge for 15 minutes job, I am charging $400 for 15 years spent in the industry so you don’t have to spend two more days as an expert trying to solve it and come back.

Eventually, I told him, here’s an offer at the half or price $200 - since you probably did not bother to read the price of gig, if you are satisfied with the results pay, if not - you don’t have to pay anything.

  • He stated he is fascinated, but he is a poor man, asking to send $30 via PayPal - which of course I rejected telling him he owes nothing. And he paid nothing, but never mind.

Another case:

  • Customer starts with a very well defined set of tasks he wants to be done. He gets an offer.
  • Then he starts negotiating the price, but at the same time adding more and more to his request, basically leading to “Build me a house” approach.
  • We spent a couple of hours talking, he was like “I hired another company to do this for me for like $20 can you match their price”
  • Asking why he is not in communication with that company, he was like “I want a pro”
  • Ok so you want a PRO that matches the price of someone who doesn’t even want to talk with you or explain the methodology used.

I politely told him:

I am sure they have their pricing as a company, the same way I have mine. I already dropped you the pricing, and can’t go any further with this, nor to match the price of others.

You can definitely go and buy Fiat car for $5000 - it will work, but you can also buy BMW for 30.000 and it will work better. Of-course, there’s a new model of Ranger Rover priced about 120.000 with a full equipment and it will surely and securely take you whenever you want.

Of-course, if you end up with a fault, you will have to wait 30 days for servicing your Fiat and pay extra, while you can get a Range Rover mechanic come on field and fix it for you for free.

How do you handle this types of customers?

What I find for them to have in common is messages such as:

  • “Are u There” - if you don’t respond within 15 seconds.
  • “Why U R not responding to me” - if you don’t respond in 30 seconds 🙂

Overall, how do you approach to energy vampires who are convinced this is a slave market. At one side, it’s important to demonstrate PRO level of communication even to them, but on the other side, if you have like 3 orders in queue from a normal people / companies businesses and trust they put into your hands that are paying thousands, giving you a root permissions to their corporate networks, while you are just wasting their time while discussing with someone who thinks he can get buy a slave for $20 on Fiverr.

Usually this type of person does not even read what you write, or read partially what he likes to hear - and pushes what he want even if politely asked to search the community of many talented people for these that may better suit his need.

Do you have such situation and how do you approach to them? I believe maintaining a PRO level of communication is crucial so you can’t just block it, but then again there must be a scenario to politely escape endless communication with someone who is bored, think of this place as a Slave Market, or even something worse 🙂

Don’t get me wrong, 98% of contacts I receive are totally normal people, but these 2% can quickly consume more time that 98% of these who usually converts to paying customers.

Looking forward for opinions of others, since the conversion rate matters - but quality as well for these who already ordered.

(Quick Note: This is in regards to Fiverr PRO - where it’s expected to have a bit detailed initial conversation since the tasks are not trivial, nor the gig price, not to mention it’s mostly businesses who buys )

He started screaming “This is insane, you are charging $400 for 15 minutes job”

Here is where you should say politely “Ok thank you for your inquiry, have a great day!” and then stopped responding to what will undoubtedly be more rude messages.

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On 2/18/2020 at 1:42 PM, csnet1 said:
  • Then he starts negotiating the price, but at the same time adding more and more to his request, basically leading to “Build me a house” approach.
  • We spent a couple of hours talking

Don’t talk for a couple of hours with someone who is trying to negotiate the price. You gave the price so end it. Say “Thank you for your inquiry. I’m sorry we couldn’t come to an agreement on the price but I wish you the best of luck in your endeavors.”

Then stop responding to what will undoubtedly be more rude messages.

Once you tell someone the price they have two choices. One is they accept. The other choice is they do not accept. That means anything after they do not accept is a waste of your time.

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I just say “Your budget is well under our rates, so we will not be a good fit for this project. Thanks for your interest!”

If they say they can get it cheaper elsewhere, “I never argue about what my competitors charge, they know better than me what their service is worth”.

I have those two saved in the quick messages. I’ll avoid working with an haggler at all costs, specially if they keep adding more and more details. That’s a big red flag - imagine a couple of extra revisions are needed? That kind of client will want everything and pay for nothing extra, because he already feels like he is overpaying.

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On 2/18/2020 at 2:57 PM, csnet1 said:

What I find for them to have in common is messages such as:

From what you wrote, there’s another thing they have in common: they want you to lower your price.

And your mistake is that you do it.

As soon as someone wants me to lower my price, I politely tell them that I’m sorry, but I can’t do it, because it would be unfair and unprofessional to all of my clients who have paid the full price.

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@catwriter it seems so. I will try to apply this approach and see how it goes. You bring some important points, it is actually unprofessional towards the customer who paid a regular price yet having another one getting a discount thus asking for more and more. Yet, It seems there’s a category of people who just like to talk and try to get you out of professional zone into a rude conversations with no intention to buy anything.

I guess I’ll need to modify an approach to them as per suggestion given in this thread. Taking hours long communications with persons who obviously has no intention to buy (unless they can buy a house for 10 bucks) do actually harm those who paid to get the job to be done. This time could be used wisely to over-deliver to those who play by the rules and get them to spread a word about great service to others yet attracting more buyers.

Thanks to all the community for the good hints!

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  • 1 year later...

You know these situations - client can't decide immediately. I used to joke a bit to relax an atmosphere with usual responses such as 'Take your time, I live here anyway, you know where to find me'. Well... only to wake up one morning to realise Fiverr managed to take over the place from Facebook on my personal computer 🙂 So, I officially live there 😄 

Best tip I can give while getting close to 400 completed orders. Keep it strong, and share your funny stories on how you are managing to be there in the right moment when that messages button shows pops an unread message / possible lead mark. Is it Fiverr the first thing you check in the morning while preparing a coffee like I do?

Best,

S.

fiverr.png.3e2765d4b0bc40c627a5317dccb1fc9a.png

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Hello, @csnet1

I do not visit the Fiverr Forum often and I just found your post from Monday.

On 11/15/2021 at 3:25 PM, csnet1 said:

Is it Fiverr the first thing you check in the morning while preparing a coffee like I do?

Yes, it is. Usually I want to answer the inbox messages I get during the night. Also, I all but abandoned FB about a year ago because I feel, like many social media platforms it has too much power.

Sadly a post like yours gets lost in all of the "clutter" on the Fiverr Forum by what some of us oldies call 'meksells', because such users were constantly on the Fiverr Forum asking how they could mek sells. However, lately it seems such users now know how to spell make sales correctly. However their post have not changed much as they continue to make posts  seeking 'tips and tricks' to be successful her rather than actually doing the work success on Fiverr requires!

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