I remember one of the worst clients I’ve ever dealt with. My experience with her made me change how I hire clients. Sadly, you always remember those who treated you poorly.

She came into my orbit around 2009. She was quite demanding right from the start. I hosted a teleclass to introduce people to the training program that I was trying to fill. I shared the content, then invited people to go to a page to register for the training.

No sooner had she registered that she sent at least 10 emails over a course of 2-days asking for information that was NOT included in the training.

She then sent a few emails over the weekend wondering if she should buy a program that was on special, even though she was getting the program as part of her registration. No one on my team checks emails over the weekend. So, by Monday morning, my assistant let me know that this person had threatened legal action because we failed to answer her promptly.

When my assistant shared with her that we don’t have staff working on the weekend, she proceeded to give us suggestions on how to upgrade our helpdesk system so that people would be aware of this.

As a student in the program, she was the first to complete the homework. I was both proud and puzzled. Proud because it showed that she was an eager student. Puzzled because while completing her assignments, she criticized EVERYTHING.

Here’s a litany of the stuff she complained about…

• She complained that we promised 60-minutes of recorded content, but that the recordings were only 30-40 minutes. We explained that we edited the content to remove unnecessary noises, lengthy student introductions, technical errors that students were troubleshooting and other unnecessary content.

• She complained that the live training took place when she wasn’t available. That even though we published the schedule on the sales page before registering and that the schedule was mailed to each student.

• She complained that we didn’t deliver on a few bullet items on the sales page. We were confused because everything was delivered and my team showed her which training module matched with which bullet point.

• She complained that the instructor was not available to answer her questions by email. We never promised that. Instead, we shared with students to connect with the instructor via the online forums.

• She proudly pointed out that she contacted at least 3 other students in the program and they were deciding their legal options.

She complained, complained and complained.

Then, when she asked for a refund AFTER the refund period had expired (and even though she completed all the assignments and remarked how she enjoyed the accountability), she threatened to tell all her friends and all of my joint venture partners not to do business with me ever again because I’m dishonest and shady.

On top of that, she was NEVER available by phone to talk. The problem was escalated to me by my support staff and I offered on 2 occasions to hammer this out by phone. She was never available. She didn’t explain why. She just refused to get on the phone.

Her bad behaviour cost my company A LOT of money.

My staff had to spend extra time answering her many emails. They had to copy our policy from our terms and conditions pages to show her what she agreed to and why we operated our business the way we did.

Students were being affected by her bad behaviour as well. They stopped interacting in the forums because anytime they did, they’d see her complaints.

Her bad behaviour cost my company repeat business because students didn’t feel I could provide a safe environment for them to learn.

Our time was so consumed trying to make an unhappy customer happy that we were unable to provide great customer service to those who were pleased with our work.

You may be feeling a bit of anger just listening to this story. She was THE WORST client I’ve ever had. And just recounting the whole experience is bringing me to a place of anxiety.

How did I deal with this issue?

Part of it was connecting to my faith. I share more details in my teaching series called Fruit of the Spirit Made Easy for Entrepreneurs. If you can join me at 2pm Eastern every Tuesday for this series, I’ll share how you can use the fruit of the Spirit for financial and spiritual success.

How would you have dealt with a situation like this? I’d love to hear your thoughts. Please enter them below.