I did something today that I never done in my whole professional career. I stopped a project half-way thru and told the Client that we are going stop working with them.
I’m not happy with doing this but this was very extraordinary circumstances and this was an extraordinary BAD Client. Made me think of this great post from Jeffrey Zeldman that was about what to look for before you take on a bad job.
In this case, we did take this project on, and in the process working with this Client realized that this particular Client was a very bad to work for. The worst kind. You name it.
- Change scoped many times from the original scope
- Never listened to us, the Vendor. Always thought they knew more then us on what they hired us for
- So called Creative Director (cough, cough) who would make UI decisions, make design changes on his own and then show the Client before talking to us, the Vendor (who would be building the project)
- Be late on Client milestones but still expect us to keep our dates (even though they were adding more scope to our work)
- Client would secretly bring their Tech Leader on the call and tell us that we can do this cause he has done it. Next day when we ask for a sample to view he basically tell us to go find the answer on the web.
We kept as best as possible to work with them. Being patient. Being flexible.
Everyone here at the company who worked with them, hated to do so. The Client was arrogant. Rude, and most importantly non-communicative. With us and with each other internally.
I had to do something. I had numerous talks with the head account person but it was to no avail. He couldn’t control his people, he was working in an asylum….there was no warden there (note: most big companies are like this).
And we have many many new projects coming in, some large scale projects that would be taking up more of our time and resources in the upcoming weeks. Plus they were with Clients we enjoy working with and working for.
So I made the call. I called my main contact and said we were out. We could not continue to work with the Client. It was a very very slippery slope and just getting worst and worst every day. The Client wasn’t happy and didn’t want to take my answer. But it finally had to be done.
The lesson? No matter who the Client is (and this Client was a huge, multi-million maybe billion dollar company), if they don’t trust you and enable you to do your job, then it has to end. Continuing to go with a Client who can’t manage you or themselves is a recipe for disaster.
Now I can breathe a bit easier.
