Dealing with angry customers is the thing that every photographer has experienced at least once.

It is not such a pleasant situation, right? There is no man, who doesn't want to avoid it. The photographer's profession involves close communication with clients, so it is necessary to know how to behave if your client is aggressive or dissatisfied and takes out all his anger on you.

In this case, the cause of the conflict could be anything:  too sunny, too long photo shoot, "inappropriate" look, too high photo restoration prices on the opinion of the client, and all stuff like that. It's important to understand what caused the aggression of the client and how to handle it. 

In this article, we'll look at the examples of difficult situations in customer service and try to dig into its very essence and find out how to solve this problem.

Dealing With Angry Customers As Personal Skill

The first and most important rule is not to take it personally. It's very difficult to do this, because it's a human nature to take offenses way too seriously. But the photographer's profession, just like any another profession, requires active social life as well as requires a high level of self-control and moderation. 

 Ability to separate your feelings from your work does not only preserve your health, but also improves the quality of your work.  You will be able to correct mistakes or redo your work for some other reason faster and more precise if you are not angry or suppressed.

When it comes to dealing with dissatisfied customers, you must remember one thing: do not deny your guilt. Even if that's not absolutely true, and you've done it right and, on your opinion, in this or another photo the style of processing should be exactly like this, but the customer thinks otherwise, you have to agree with him. 

A customer is always right it's a rule that works for any area of work. And even though it's not true, but it is important for a client that you agree with him. The dispute will not improve the situation anyway, only ruin your day, and your client's day too.

Don't be shy to apologize, there's nothing wrong with that.

But, on the other hand, this doesn't mean you should apologize for everything and take all the whims of a client, there's a fine line.

Some tips and useful information for the most common examples of the difficult situations in customer service you will find here:

Top 5 Tips on Dealing with Difficult Clients | The Business of Photography

Don't be lazy to call or write. Still, messages, which are certainly very convenient and do not require personal communication, but, be sure that phone call or even better meeting is a way to avoid misunderstanding and unreasonable sympathy. 

Remember, the problem needs to be solved quickly and qualitatively. The longer a client waits, the angrier he gets. If you can't do what he wants you to do right now, offer him something in return.

If it is not possible to solve the problem, then compensate it. Your primary concern is to keep a customer happy with you as a professional. Whichever of customer service situations has occurred, remember that you cannot let your client go disappointed anyway.  Take care of your reputation, because you are differ from the other photographers but not only style, but also a good customer service. 

Examples of Dealing with Difficult Customers In Action 

Customer problems can occur if they are one of the following types:

- Angry

These people either have problems with their own control in general, or they came to you already angry. When dealing with angry customers, the key is to keep self-control. In this case, the question "How would you like this problem to be solved?" is appropriate.

- Indecisive

The problem with this type of clients is that he doesn't know what he wants. Whatever you offer him, he will either answer that he does not know, or agree with every world you say and leave it to you to decide.  Worst of all, even after a final result, you can get the same undefined answer, so you will never know whether your client likes photos or not. 

The main thing here is to be patient, and to make your questions in such a way that you get specific answers, such as: not "What kind of processing do you like?", but show examples of editing and ask to select one of the suggested photos. This model will also work for other types of customer service situations, since it helps not only to reach the maximum specificity, but to distract the person and avoid a potential conflict. 

- Demanding

The exact opposite of the previous client type. Such a person not only answers all your questions in the smallest detail, but will give you examples of the images, show the poses and the image he wants to see in the photos and assign time and space. There's nothing wrong with it, because it's easier for the photographer to work with a customer, who knows exactly what he wants from this photo session, so a photographer hasn't to tell him or her what to do. 

The only problem is that you're probably going to spend a lot of your time doing this work because you have to do everything perfectly.

- Intimidating

Unfortunately, there are hardly any examples of dealing with difficult customers that can help you to deal with this type of people. But maybe the next tip will help. If your client tries to threaten you, intimidate or otherwise put pressure on you, try to be as polite as possible. 

Don't be rude and try to push pressure back. Be courteous, but cold.  

- Talkative

If you get such a client, you have to be prepared to that he will talk even during a photo session. For those people it's just hard to keep silence. The main thing in working with this human being is not to find a way to shut him down, but just to listen to. 

Maybe for a while you'll have to turn into a chatterbox. As long as you're talking, your client will have to zip his lips and listen to you.  The various examples of dealing with difficult customers show that all you need to do is to convince the person that you are interested in what he says. After all, most of these people don't require much of you — you just need to listen to, nodd, agree, and sometimes insert a few phrases. Keep calm so that dealing with angry customers query does not turn into dealing with angry photographers.

- Miser

Unlike the client types mentioned above, you may not recognize this type immediately. They may seem very nice and decent. 

But when it comes to paying, that's where the trouble starts. Why is this happening and how to deal with it? You'll find useful information here:

How to Deal With Low Paying Clients/Photography Jobs

The most unpleasant thing about photographer's work with customers is, of course, dealing with dissatisfied customers. The worst thing is that you have to redo what you've spent a lot of time on, or maybe even your money, if you're a supporter of outsourcing and turn to professional retouchers, including photo restoration services

Or if you are interested in such editing, bit don’t know how to do this and what you need to start with, find this information here

Efficient and Smart Photo Editing – Should You Edit Photos On MacBook?

 In the case of difficult clients, it may be that their corrections are inappropriate or even unreasonable, and as a professional, of course, you see it. Don't try to explain,  and certainly don't try to prove it to angry customer,  it's better to just meet his demands or get his money back and refuse to work together. Even if it's a loss for you, it's still better to throw out some money, but save your nervous system.

By the way, the next video can make you smile and roll your eyes, because all the photographers have faced this kind of thing, right?

Things Photography Clients Say

And if you haven't encountered a similar scenario, these examples of the difficult situations in customer service, which are about photo processing, will help you to be ready for this situation.

Our service will also help you maintain your mental health and good mood, and what is important, your time. So dealing with dissatisfied customers will no longer be a problem for you, we manage to do any amendments your client wants to make. If you work with old photos, our service is the best solution. Take a look at one of the photo restoration samples.

 You can see how badly the photo was damaged with multiple scratches, but our editors, who have a high level at working with Photoshop, removed them from the photograph without the trail. If they do a great work, such as restoration photos, there will be no difficulty with ordinary editing.

In whatever complex customer service situations of all possible you are, we're here to help to solve this problem.