Client's Dont have clue

[charlesh]

I'm a very polite person, but last week was absolutely sent near over the top over this client. So, this post may be a venting post, but also can be considered a lesson learned, so I will pass it along.

Client - has a website that was developed by a "family member". I'll leave it at that. They came to me asking me to fix it. Now, this just isn't any web site. It's around a thousand pages of strictly coded HTML - and an Ecommerce (if you can consider it that) site. The person who developed it basically found a shopping cart service out there, ewebcart.com, then proceeded to hand code HTML for 6 categories and about a thousand products worth of HTML pages. No kidding - hand coded HTML for all those products. Each page has a form that submits to the web cart.

Needless to say, updates for them right now take a little time. Therefore, the web designer that did it, aka family member, went back to school and doesn't have the time to do it. Yeah, right. I wouldn't have the time either. So, they came to me to build them a proper cart and get them set up with a back end that they can use to update the store.

Well, it took me a couple of days to set the cart up and a couple of months to load all the products in (not full-time, of course). So, last week the site is ready to go. I build the site with a dedicated IP on my server (yay, Glowhost rocks), and was all ready to launch. The client asked what they needed to do. I told them that in order to launch we would have to point their domain name to my server. I told them, easy to do and that they could handle it if they wanted to. Well, they didn't know where to go to do that. I asked where did you register the domain? They responded they didn't remember. Who has the account password? Uh, we don't know...

So, I then went through the forgot password wizard FOR THEM at Networksolutions. I had my client on the other end. They were forwarding E-mails as they came to the main account. Thank God that they registered a still active Email. How many of you have done this for your clients too?

The next thing was that I told them that since the site was ready to go, I would change the DNS and it would go live. Now, up to this point all issues as far as I could pull out of this client had been tested, resolved and put to bed.

After I hung up with them, I went into the account and changed the DNS. Bingo, we were live. Test transaction worked well, mail server fired off as was supposed to and the SSL was in proper sorts. I congratulated myself silently for a job well done and after I was absolutely sure that everything worked properly, I called the client.

Their answer was, You did WHAT? I said that just as you had instructed, I launched the site and it was working, YAY and Congratulations to all. Have some champagne.

Uh, we'll have to take a look. So, I get a call back in a couple of hours and they told me to change it back. Huh? Change it back? Yeah, we didn't know you were going to launch the site already. I felt like saying, what part of spending an hour on the phone with me with network solutions didn't you understand? What part of change the server didn't you get?

OK, whatever. I changed it back and they had their old crappy store back instead of the shiny new awesome store I had. I asked why? Why, since all issues had been resolved and that the money was getting in the bank?

We had a big meeting the next day to discuss. The reason they wanted me to put the store back was because the Auth.Net seal wasn't in the right place. Can you believe it? I sat there in the meeting and said that I would put it where they wanted it, but wanted to scream out, What? The Auth.Net seal was misplaced? It took me all of 3 minutes to fix the placement. For that, I had to roll back a launch!

Some other items that they came up with for me to change were some text size increases and a suggestion of a color change or two. All of which I think were prompted by being in a meeting and those persons having to look smart and come up with some suggestions while they were at it. All changes took me around a few minutes to make. I'm still fuming.

Times like these makes me wanna take up another career.
Thanks for the vent, sorry for such a rant.

CharlesH

[rlhanson]

Hey CharlesH -

Let me say first - Great Job! Awesome Client Services!

They may not ever realize the awesome job you did, the dedicated customer support you provided, or the amount of work performed (at what I'm sure was an excellent price)... but we all know!

And just to say, it's nice to know someone else has those "grrrr!" days! Gotta love 'em otherwise we wouldn't appreciate the "good" clients.

[charlesh]

Thanks, Lynne.

Things are better. We have our second meeting tomorrow after a week's delay. I've come to grips with it. It's a good lesson and every one of these lessons makes me feel like i'm that much more experienced in business. I may just turn away business now that looks like it could be of the "I don't have a clue" variety, but also be stuck in their ways and not open to you being the expert.

Charlesh

[jmarcv]

CharlesH?, no I like the listhp of Char-lesh

LOL! Aint white folk the $h17?

Amazing isnt it? Well get used to it. With 6 candles up on my bday cake, I can say that they seem to have successfully bred, because there's a heck of a lot more out there in these silico-hackin (not cotton pickin) days.

Thankully I have come to the position where I only have one customer. But as luck would have it, this customer sounds like yours LOL!

A customer should always be treated with respect. The customer is always.... in charge. They are paying. And if it gets wierd, as you did in your second meeting I hope? you come to terms. If you cant, its done. It has too be that simple. Just forget about the money (if you are that good, it will come) and do what is right. (PS not what you THINK is right)

Good story... I know exactly

[rlhanson]

wow John-Marc.

LOL! Aint white folk the $h17?

I can say that they seem to have successfully bred

Care to elaborate?

[rlhanson]

Forgot to put a smiley... you feeling ornery?

[jmarcv]

Ornery? Nah! Remember - you are "Master Glow Jedi" and I at times have to justify mine.

elaborate?
Sure. Inconsiderate clueless customers seem to abound in profusion, like prarie dogs, except prarie dogs get periodically erradicated by the bubonic plague, and that doesnt seem to happen with customers.

PS I am not in Politics, so I can make 'politically incorrect' statements aginst my own race, I think..... George Carlin did it, didnt he?

[Matt]

Just remember the views and thoughts of John-Marc do not necessarily reflect those of GlowHost....

There, I changed your Avatar so there is no confusion.

George Carlin wasn't funny anyways.

[charlesh]

This is a new John-Marc I'm seeing here. Thanks for the encouragement, even though I don't quite understand about the first part...

Had the meeting today and launched. All were in good spirits and also did most of the talking. I figured that they just needed to argue and debate amongst themselves a bit before they were "ready" to go live, even though I was.

As my own company, the good thing is that I am well insulated from all the corporate BS that takes place in other companies, but also naive sometimes when I walk into a situation where it is not anything I have done, but the constraints and / or the limitations of a client's own corporate culture that I have no idea about which can adversely affect things. There are always those land mines out there that just don't factor in on a proposal or contract, things you just can't predict or know about.

Lesson learned, and thanks for all the encouragement.

Char - Lesh

[rlhanson]

Matt! I need my title changed back! lol

Should be able to that in your forum profile editor, I enabled the option for you a while back. I guess this board rolls the title back to the ones that are pre-configured to show up at certain post counts. Bad programing there I guess. Should be an easy fix for you though.