What is it with clients?...
- Started
- Last post
- 11 Responses
- Spookytim
It is so common for this to happen...
I send an email to a client, and I stress to them that I will be away from my computer and WONT SEE EMAILS FOR THE REST OF THE DAY, so if they needed to ask me anything they will NEED TO CALL ME ON MY MOBILE and I give them the number.
I can guarantee though that they will have sent me an email back, maybe an hour afterwards, asking me to make an urgent change to the visual I've provided.
I'M NOT GOING TO REPLY, BECUASE I'M NOT AT MY DESK. READ THE EMAIL YOU GRUNT. (no offense Gruntt)
Just now I emailed a client to say I am going into a meeting from now until 11.00. I wont be contactable at all, so please email me your comments and I will call you up when I get back to my desk.
10 minutes later, she's phoning my office phone, my mobile phone, reception...
I'M IN A FUCKING MEETING YOU DWACK. READ THE EMAIL AGAIN.
- Raniator0
I feel you.
One of my pet hates is when I send someone an email saying:
"..., please email xyz@thing.co.uk if you ...".
And guess what? They email me. Asking me. The second or third line of the email asks you to email someone else. Not me. And guess what? They email... ok, you get the idea.
- olli1010
LOL - I deal with this all the time. Simple solution: Activate your Out Of Office or Auto-Response function on your email with a custom message for your clients.
Naturally, their response will be "Why am I paying you - I want access to you 24/7/365!"
- Spookytim0
Its a combination of:
1. People are too busy
2. People don't care enough to pay attention
3. People, as a species are generally markedly less intelligent than you and I, and a few others. I think its time to split the homosapien branch in to two offshoots: Homosapien Intelligensi and HomosapienGeorgeARomeroCast.
- Spookytim0
Out Of Office:
When I used to bother with an out of office message I would find that a client, reading I was 'out of the office' would go into absolutely crazy panic mode and would email me a hundred times, maybe to try and lure me back to my desk magnetically ro something, and also call my studio phone 40 times leaving increasingly mental messagers, and call my mobile non-stop so I had a phone constantly blooping to say I had 40 messages waiting, and generally clients would go into apoplectic melt-down.
My life got easier the day the penny dropped that I should NOT use the Out-Of-Office facility.
- Spookytim0
I had one client who, hysterically, would reply to my out of office messages saying "Okay, but when you will you be back because we need to get this thing progressed?", and my auto message would reply and repeat the same information and he would say "You've already said this, I need to know when you'll be back" and so on.
That was a long time ago in the early days of internectivity and I'm sure by now he's been chemically lobotomised and lives quite happily in a grand stately home that's been converted into a care facility.
- detritus0
In future, employ reverse-psychology.
Demand some information or asset during the time you intend to be in your meeting, via a phone call - insist, absolutely, that they phone you and make every effort to harry you.
- Spookytim0
I do find people lack any kind of environmental awareness when dealing with things. I was waiting at the bus stop to get into work the other day. I'd been there about ten minutes when an irate voice squeeked out from behind me "Well do you want a lift or not?" and I looked round and there was a woman from the business across the corridor from me. "Oh, I didn't see you there!" I said... she said "Well I've been there for five minutes already while you made your mind up" clearly quite irritated by my ponderous inactivity... "Yes, but.... I didn't know you were there" I said again...
"Well who else would be driving my car and offering you a lift?" she said.
I explained, half crying at the hopelessness of it all that I've never seen her car before, so even if I had watched her pull up, which I hadn't becuase she pulled up behind my back after driving past me, I would still have had no idea it was her anyway.
"I'm from the office OPPOSITE yours!" she clarified, with exasperation.
I knew that. It was tangential to the situation. How can you win against such blistering surrealism?
- trooper0
turn on your 'not here' email thingie that auto replies with a message saying your away.
- Spookytim0
Trooper, would it be fair to say you haven;t got time to read this thread?
0 <
U