Ever wondered how to turn a disgruntled client into a happy client? This week, we tackle that very challenge, prompted by Bailey Thompson, a budding photographer who recently faced her first unhappy client. You'll walk away with strategies to enhance your client relations, ensuring every interaction, even the tough ones, strengthens your business.
But that's not all! We also explore the powerful role of clear communication in setting client expectations. Discover how to craft informative blog posts that not only boost your SEO but also educate your clients on what to expect from their sessions. We emphasize the importance of discussing specific image requests and timelines during the booking and consultation phase, to prevent misunderstandings. By reiterating key information and maintaining open dialogue, you can ensure a seamless and positive client experience every time. Tune in to equip yourself with the tools to handle unhappy clients confidently and set the stage for smoother client interactions in the future.
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Let's Work Together:
The Focused Photographer Lab (marketing membership): www.girlmeansbusiness.com/lab
Ever wondered how to turn a disgruntled client into a happy client? This week, we tackle that very challenge, prompted by Bailey Thompson, a budding photographer who recently faced her first unhappy client. You'll walk away with strategies to enhance your client relations, ensuring every interaction, even the tough ones, strengthens your business.
But that's not all! We also explore the powerful role of clear communication in setting client expectations. Discover how to craft informative blog posts that not only boost your SEO but also educate your clients on what to expect from their sessions. We emphasize the importance of discussing specific image requests and timelines during the booking and consultation phase, to prevent misunderstandings. By reiterating key information and maintaining open dialogue, you can ensure a seamless and positive client experience every time. Tune in to equip yourself with the tools to handle unhappy clients confidently and set the stage for smoother client interactions in the future.
TRY FLODESK Save 50% OFF you first year when you sign up using this link ⬇️ https://flodesk.com/c/5WCB4U
_______________________________________
Ask Me Anything: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1R0DmOLEQ8xjWf98Xcf7K9YBhhaXRiIkuoOTqirVHlRk/prefill
_______________________________________
Let's Work Together:
The Focused Photographer Lab (marketing membership): www.girlmeansbusiness.com/lab
Know Your Niche Workbook- https://spring-feather-348.myflodesk.com/
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Speaker 1:
Hey there and welcome to the Girl Means Business podcast, the show where we're all about helping you feel confident both as a mom and a business owner. I'm your host, kendra Swalls, mom of two, former teacher and full-time photographer and business coach. Each week we'll discuss the challenges, success and secrets that make you say I can do this, because you absolutely can. So pop in those earbuds, grab your favorite snack and let's dive in, because this girl means business. Hey there, welcome to the Girl Means Business podcast. This week we are doing a listener question episode, and I love these episodes. This is my favorite thing about podcasting is when I get to hear from you as the listener and I get to somewhat virtually interact with you through these listener questions. So if you would like to submit your question to be answered here on the podcast, it can be broad, it can be specific, it can be whatever you need it to be. As you'll see, in today's episode we have a very kind of specific question, whereas in the past we've had some more kind of general, broad questions. Any question is on the table. Like you can bring me any of your questions and I will answer them. All you have to do is go down to the show notes and click on the ask me anything link. That will take you to a Google form where you can submit your questions and I, if the more questions I get, the more of these episodes that we'll do. So please, please, please, go and submit your questions down below. Okay, this week's listener question is one that I honestly had not even thought about doing as an episode topic. I don't know why. I guess it just was not something that really crossed my mind too often. Fortunately, like knock on wood, I haven't had to deal with this too often in my business. But it's a really, really good question and it deals with the idea of what to do when you have an unhappy client. So let me read you the question that was sent in. It comes from Bailey Thompson. Okay, bailey says my question is about dealing with an unhappy client.
Speaker 1:
I launched my photography business last summer and have been pretty happy with the clients I've been getting so far. I work in a school, so I get quite a few referrals from people I work with and so far all of them have been really great. I know I'm still new and learning, but the reviews I have are all five star. Last week I had my first unhappy client and it has really been bothering me. It was a family session with two kids under the age of five, so it was a little bit hectic, but I thought we got some really good shots. After I sent their gallery to the mom, she emailed me back and said that she didn't really like a lot of the photos because her kids weren't looking at the camera. She didn't like the way her dress bunched up when they were sitting on the blanket on the ground and you could see her husband's phone in his pocket in some of the photos, which I didn't even notice until after I was done editing them. She hasn't asked for a reshoot or anything, but just knowing that she isn't happy with them is really stressing me out.
Speaker 1:
How do you handle situations like this and does it get easier over time? This is such a good question and I'm going to answer the very last question. First, does it get easier over time? Yes, the more that you deal with clients, the more that you deal with people in your business, you learn so much about one, how to kind of prevent these situations from happening again. And two, you start to learn ways to handle the situations and they don't become something that you stress about as often, especially because you start to feel like you have more control over mitigating the issue in the first place. So and I'll kind of break that down, because there's parts of this I want to talk about that are going to relate to the actual like how do you solve the problem you're in currently? But then I want to kind of go upstream and talk about how do you put things into place in your business so that this isn't happening again in the future or, if it does, you can at least have some policies and things in place to handle it and not let it bother you and affect you so much.
Speaker 1:
Okay, so let's talk about the problem at hand. You have a client who has come to you for a session or, in Bailey's case, a session, but any other case a product or service, and they tell you after the fact that they are unhappy with that product or that service. Number one is you need to disconnect the idea that they are unhappy with their product from they are unhappy with you as a human, as a person. It's really difficult to do and it's, you know, easier for me to sit here in my little office and tell you this, you know, disconnect. But the sooner you can recognize that they are not unhappy with you as a person, they are unhappy with the product they received, then you can start to recognize that like, okay, I can take myself and my emotions out of this and I can focus on what exactly is in front of me that I can fix. Now, in this case for Bailey, your client has not asked for anything in return, which is fine, like even if they had come back and said you know, is it possible to do a reshoot or can we, you know, get a discount on a future session? Then you could kind of decide how you want to negotiate those requests.
Speaker 1:
Now for the particular issues that she has with her images in this question I would say there's a couple of things. One is just between you and I and everybody else listening. She's being a little bit nitpicky about some of the things. Now, the phone in the husband's pocket yes, that's annoying. That's something you could probably go back and edit out. Just say, hey, I didn't even notice it. I'd be happy to go back and re-edit the photos where you can see his phone in his pocket. Do the best you can to kind of minimize the visibility of it.
Speaker 1:
As far as the kids not smiling at the camera, that's about expectations. She obviously had expectations of the type of photos that she was going to get or that she wanted, and whether or not that was clearly communicated or not. That's something we'll talk about when we talk about like the upstream kind of pre-session expectations and things like that and communication. But the part about where she is saying, like my dress looks funny, I'm bunched up To me when I hear that. What I hear is her insecurity. She looked at those photos and she thought I don't like how I look in these photos, which means that I don't like the photos overall. And let's be honest, when it comes to situations like this, especially with photography, if the mom in the picture is not happy with how she looks in the photos, it doesn't matter how happy her kids look or how great her husband looks or how much fun they look like they're having. If she is very self-conscious about how she looks in the photos, then that is not something you as a photographer can fix.
Speaker 1:
I saw this a lot with boudoir clients when I was shooting a lot of boudoir sessions. When I was shooting a lot of boudoir sessions, I would have clients who would come in who looked absolutely beautiful and yet, like they would see their photos and they would just pick themselves apart oh I can see this little tiny role here. Or oh, I don't like the way my leg looks in this photo. Or I had one girl who was like my earlobes look funny, and I was like your earlobes, like it doesn't make any sense. And so, as women, we tend to look specifically at ourselves in these images, and so for her, that's an insecurity issue. For all those women that I was dealing with in the boudoir sessions, that was an insecurity issue for them. That is not something I'm going to be able to go and fix, and so I.
Speaker 1:
I think that in this case, the best option you have or let me put it this way, the option that I would choose is that I would not offer a refund. A, because she's not asking for one, and B you delivered what you agreed to deliver, based on the price she was paying you. So you are not responsible for whether or not she is necessarily happy with her images or how she looks in the images. You have fulfilled your end of the contract. You agreed with her, you did the session, you delivered the images to the best of your ability and your talent skill. Now what I would potentially do is I would send her a message and I would say I am so sorry to hear that you are unhappy with your images. I thought that you looked absolutely beautiful. You have such a beautiful family.
Speaker 1:
I do recognize that I overlooked the phone in the pocket. I would be happy to go back and re-edit those to remove that. You know that, so you can't tell there's a phone in his pocket. You know, even try to go in and maybe like, edit a little bit of her outfit to see if you can't tell there's a phone in his pocket. You know, even try to go in and maybe like, edit a little bit of her outfit to see if you can't slim it down a little bit or remove some of the like, whatever it is she's self conscious about.
Speaker 1:
If you want to take time to re-edit some of the family photos, if you can do a face swap, if there's any photos where the kids were looking, that's up to you. If you want to offer that or you could offer the option of hey, we can do, um, a reshoot at a discounted price. Again, I would not necessarily say that you will do it for free, because you are essentially redoing the entire photo shoot. You deserve to at least be compensated for something. So I would say I would love to offer you an additional session, or, if you want to call it a reshoot, um, for this price, um, and I will add in X amount of extra images for that session to make up for you know, and again, I think the part here too, is that it allows you to feel like you've done something to make them happy, and it's not. It's finding that balance of like okay, I want them to be happy, but I don't want it to be something that requires me to lose money on this deal, cause you've again, you've, you have delivered what you said you were going to deliver, you've done your job, or you don't want it to be something that now takes up all of your time and energy.
Speaker 1:
And it becomes this back and forth, because I've had a client like this in the past, where I offered, I kind of opened myself up, I guess, to offering, like, certain things in response to an unhappy client, and then it became that they were asked, they kept asking for more and more and like can you edit this now, can you change this? Now, can we do this instead? And it got to the point where I finally had to say you know I can, I will do one set of re-edits and that's all that's left. Like, you get what you get and I know that sounds harsh, and for people who are like people pleasers that's me it's hard sometimes to break out of that. But you have to have boundaries in your business and you cannot allow the clients to take advantage of your kindness and overuse you or over ask for something in exchange or in return just because they're unhappy with it. It all again comes back to like this kind of balancing act of you want to make them happy and you want to give them a good experience so that they walk away going hey, even though I wasn't completely happy with how the images turned out the first time, she did X, y and Z to make up for it. But at the same time, you have to respect your boundaries and recognize that you did deliver on the product you offer that you promised in the first place, for the amount that they paid you. Okay, so let's look at what I would do in order to use this as a learning experience. I know that this is probably stressing you out right now. However, this can be a great learning experience, for what can you do in the future to prevent this from happening again, or to at least have some things in place. So let's kind of back it on up to before your clients ever book with you.
Speaker 1:
One is it comes down to educating our clients, so you need to have a clear understanding of what are your boundaries, what are the things not even boundaries, but like. What are your kind of parameters? Like, what are the things that are like? This is what my business does and this is what my business stands for and this is what my business represents, or how I represent myself. So, using this session as an example, do you focus more on candid in the like, action, shots in the moment, shots like more documentary style photography? Is that your style? Or are you showcasing a lot of images on your website of people like families smiling at the camera and everybody's looking and smiling and it's more posed? If you are advertising more posed, but then your client gets this more like playful documentary style, there's a disconnect there. So you have to look at what is it that I am advertising versus what my client is actually getting and if there is a disconnect, how can you kind of bridge the gap there so that you set the expectations up and then educating as far as, like, blog posts, content on your website, social content, like talking about the expectations, talking about the things that you want your clients to know before they come into a session with you.
Speaker 1:
This is where I really like to incorporate blog content, not only for because it has great SEO power, but because then you have it kind of written out and you don't have to rewrite it for every single client. So if you book a client or if you're in consultations with a client and they have questions or you want them to be prepared for their session, you can send them an email with links to different blog posts that are going to be able to tell them like, hey, this is what you can expect, and so one of those blog posts like for Bailey's example, could be what type of photos can you expect from your session? And you could talk about how you know you really focus on the connection between family members. You focus on families interacting with each other and having fun and laughing and playing, and, while you do understand the value of having like the pose smiling at the camera images, and you will do your best to get those photos in the session. Sometimes when you're working with families and kids, especially young kids, it's not always possible. They don't always cooperate. So while you will do your best to get at least one or two of those images, the real focus is how can we capture the love and joy and laughter of your family in these more candid moments? So that's setting them up to understand like hey, when I come into this session, like she's going to try to get the photo that you know I see in on pinterest or whatever, but the really like, what she's really looking for is these candid kind of photos. And again, if you're showing that on your website and they already see that, then that's what they're going to expect anyway. So setting those expectations up early is going to help them make sure that they understand what to expect from you.
Speaker 1:
Now the second thing kind of goes along with the first one, which is just communication. So all of this really comes back to communicating with your client what they can expect from you. So communication in the beginning is going to be content, it's going to be blog posts, it's going to be social media. It's going to be what's on your website. That is, the content they are first interacting with, without you having to be present for that interaction. So, if someone is looking at you as their photographer, they can go to your website and read your content. They can, you know, binge read your blog post. They can go on your social media accounts and see what you have there. You don't have to be the one present, but you're already educating them and setting up expectations with them in that content.
Speaker 1:
The second type of communication is when they actually reach out to you and inquire with you to book a session, and so in those communications whether it's email, zoom calls, phone calls however, you're doing your consultations and your communications to set up your sessions. This is where you need to be continuing that open conversation of asking them like what are you looking for? Are there certain images that you really want to get? And letting them know like I will do my best to capture these images. Just know that every family and every session is unique, and I think that, even if you don't get that exact image you have in your mind, we're going to capture some really beautiful moments that you are going to find even more Um, that you are going to find even more, you're going to cherish even more than you would the one you originally thought of. So letting them know like if they come to you with a Pinterest board of 20 images of, like these crazy epic photos and you, you know, with mountains in the background and you live in Iowa like let them know that's probably not the images they're going to get. So having that communication between what is it that the client is expecting, what is it that you offer, and making sure you're all on the same page before you go into the session can be really helpful.
Speaker 1:
One of the things I see happen here a lot is the miscommunication or the disconnect in when the product or service will be completed. And so, using the photography example, I've seen a lot of people who have had clients that have get upset with them because they don't get their images back when they think they should. And I say that when they think they should, because it was not clearly communicated to them multiple times when they would actually get their photos back or when they would actually get delivery of their product or service. So, again, when I say communication, it also needs to be multiple times.
Speaker 1:
Think about when you tell your kids something. If you tell your kids like, hey, can you pick up your tennis shoes and take them to your room, they might hear you the first time, it might get done the first time. If you're in my house it's very rare that happens I'm usually having to ask two or three times. Or if I have to remind people of things, I'm like hey, tell my husband, hey, we've got this thing on Friday night at six o'clock. Okay, a couple of days later, hey, don't forget, we had that thing Friday night at six o'clock. Like, the more times I tell him, the more likely he is to remember and be prepared and ready to go for this thing at six o'clock on Friday.
Speaker 1:
Same thing with your clients. If you are telling them like your images, images will be delivered, or your product or your service will be completed on, you know, within three weeks of your session date or three weeks of your start date, then you need to tell them that multiple times Because, again, they may have heard it or they may have read it, it didn't quite process, or they've forgotten about it and they don't want to go back and dig through all the things. So if you're telling them something one time, then you know you're probably not going to, they're not going to hear it or see it and it's not going to be retained in their brain. So, multiple, multiple exposures, multiple, multiple reminders, okay, okay. And lastly, I want you to take this, like I said, and use it as an example or use it as a learning experience, but I also want you to use it as a way to create a process. So I want you to take this and go.
Speaker 1:
Okay, if this were to happen in the future, what are going to be my standard operating procedures for this situation? So I think about, like a girl, like a clothing store Okay, my friend owns a online and, well, in-person boutique and she has a return policy and her return policy, I believe, is like 30 days, um, unworn yet to have the receipt, all the things. Same thing Like if you go to target, they have a return policy. If you go to, you know, any main major store, they have a return policy. It's kind of the same thing, like, if you go to target, they have a return policy. If you go to, you know, any main major store, they have a return policy. It's kind of the same thing. So, if you need to figure out in your business and your particular product or service. What is that policy If someone's unhappy with their product, or if they want to return their product or serve or not their service.
Speaker 1:
They want to return their product or they're unhappy with their service. What is your policy? Either have that built into your contract, have it built in somewhere on your website so that in the future your clients know, hey, if they're unhappy with their service or their product, here are the steps they can take to do it. They can. Is it fill out a form? Is it contact you directly, is it? This is what you're willing to offer, and I know that some of this is going to be a little bit vague because everything is customizable to some degree. You're not going to have a one size fits all policy necessarily for everybody that has, you know, that is unhappy in your business, but at least you could have kind of a standard framework for, okay, if a client is unhappy with their photo session for X, y or Z reasons reasons that like are beyond, necessarily beyond your control to some degree, because they're unhappy with how they look in the photos, for example, then here's what I'm willing to offer. If they're unhappy because the images were not or they didn't get delivered on time, or it was something that you know came out, it was against your contract I guess I should say outside of your contract or you didn't deliver on what was in your contract or what was agreed upon. Here's how you handle this.
Speaker 1:
Like every company has these standard operating procedures, you need to have standard operating procedures for what do you do in these different situations? I think about my husband works in corporate security and he spent, when he got this new job back in 2019, he spent a lot of time creating these standard operating procedures for his staff, and it was things like here's what you do in this scenario so that when he's not there cause they have staff on call 24-7 or in the office 24-7, if he's not there and it's two in the morning and this light starts flashing on this machine you go to the state operating procedures. What do I do? Okay, here's step one, step two, step three. If that doesn't work, try this, this or this. He has that there so that it's not a panic. What do I do? Call the boss.
Speaker 1:
So, in your own business, create those standard operating procedures for the things that you can possibly foresee being stumbling blocks or when they come up in your business. Like this, when you have a client that's unhappy or that is unhappy with what they receive from you, you have your procedures to go back to and go okay, or use it as a way to create that procedure. Okay In the future, if I have a client that is unhappy with how they look in their images, here's what I'm willing to do or here's how I'm going to handle that situation. So overall, bailey, I don't think you did anything wrong here. I don't think you need to be stressing out. You are still very new to business and these are just learning. Learning blocks Like these are just things that are going to help you become a better business owner in the future, and I think that you will, just by having a conversation with her and again figuring out the expectations and deciding what you are willing to offer to her to make that client happy, um then it's something you can let go and not stress about quite so much. All right, guys, I hope that that gives you a lot to work on and think about.
Speaker 1:
Having unhappy clients, unfortunately, is just a part of business. It's a part of life. People aren't always going to be happy with us and that's okay. It's all about how we respond to that, because I tell my kids all the time you cannot control what other people do or think or say or feel. You can only control how you respond to it and how you handle it on your end.
Speaker 1:
All right, guys, once again, remember, if you have questions, if you want to be part of this podcast and have your questions answered, you can do so by going to the link below the ask me anything link. Fill out that form. It's a quick like, I think, two or three questions where you put in your name, your email and then the question you want to ask, and then yours could be the next question I answer here on the podcast. So thank you so much for tuning in this week and I will see you back here next week, same time, same place. Will see you back here next week, same time, same place. Thank you so much for tuning in this week. If you enjoyed this episode, I would love for you to take a screenshot, share it to social media and don't forget to tag. Girl means business and, as always, we greatly appreciate any reviews you leave for this podcast. Thank you so much for being here and we'll see you next week.
