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business advice | Jan 28, 2025 |
My clients often melt down over expectations, even when the project unfolds as promised. Is this normal?

Dear Sean,

My firm keeps bumping up against the same problem that we can’t seem to solve. Our clients are generally pretty wowed by our designs and buy into our vision. However, months down the line, when we are in the thick of project management, we often get the dreaded angry email—our client is emotional and upset about something they think we’ve done wrong. Now, this doesn’t happen 100 percent of the time, but it happens about half of the time so we want to take notice.

Our process is the same for each project. We have weekly internal meetings, followed by updates emailed to the clients. We provide a buffer with our install dates and always underpromise in order to over-deliver—but still, I receive “upset emails.”

In the case of the latest one, the client went against our suggestion and hired a cut-rate contractor—who, surprise, surprise—wasn’t giving them a good experience. Despite our best efforts to warn them, they still were upset with us, because of deadlines he promised them that were never possible.

Our logistics manager sent an email confirming the furniture install date—well within our original projected timeline—and the client flipped! They lamented that they wished they never took on the project and were concerned we had “forgotten about them.” After months of regular communication, we were shocked to get this email. They claimed that the project was supposed to wrap up within two months of design approval (never true), and it was now delayed three months. Rather than talking to us about their concerns, they started crowd-sourcing advice from friends who assured them that we had taken on bigger projects since signing them and their project was put on the back burner. None of this is true—we were simply waiting for their custom furniture and millwork.

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I would love to call this a one-off experience, but something like this happens more often than I would like. Despite our best efforts to manage expectations, many of our clients don’t listen to our recommendations, think they know better and then come back to blame us for their own actions. It’s exhausting and derails my entire team. We do our best to get ahead of it but can be thrown these emotional curveballs. I know, as designers, we joke about playing therapist—but I am over it. I don’t think my job should entail catering to emotional adults who refuse to take expert advice. I want to keep clients happy, but I can’t be an emotional punching bag any longer! What are we missing?

Meltdown Manager

Dear Meltdown Manager,

You might love spaghetti with tomato sauce. Would you love it if you had to eat it every day for every meal? What if the alternative was bland chicken? How excited would you be for the change? While I appreciate your efforts to get ahead of things, it is clear to me that your approach to these situations—both proactive and reactive—is biting you in the proverbial butt.

First, let’s address the flaw in your operational and financial framework, as evidenced by the contractor delay. If you are like most designers whose principal source of revenue comes from charging a commission on decor items combined with an hourly fee for project management, delays cost your firm a ton of money. A simple example: If your client spends $400,000 on furnishing, you make 30 percent and your hourly fees (including installation) average $8,000/month for, say, 10 months, your total revenue should be $120,000 plus $80,000 for a total of $200,000. If the project takes 10 months as planned, your firm gets $20,000 per month. Easy enough. But if there is a delay during which your only additional revenue is from a few extra hours troubleshooting additional project issues you will lose $20,000 per month. In this case, the three-month delay would cost your firm $60,000. So you are getting lambasted by your client and you are getting seriously hurt financially.

Risk must be paid for. Period. If you are not forthright about what risk you are and are not willing to take on as a business, you will be taking it indiscriminately. It’s crucial to clearly communicate the consequences of any client actions that deviate from your agreed-upon process. It’s one thing to tell a client that it’s a mistake to choose a poor contractor. It’s another thing to enforce your policies by raising your fees if there is a project delay you did not cause—or let clients know that you simply will not work with a contractor not up to your standards. (You can put both in your contract.) Telling someone the sky might fall is not the same thing as telling them what is going to happen if it does.

Now I’ll address the other, more important, part of your problem: Your communication with clients is leaving something to be desired. They are paying you an incredible amount of money and the best you can do is send a weekly email? Think about all of the communication tools available to you today: video, voice, text, all things AI and its ability to render images—and you’re using none of them.

My challenge to you, to paraphrase Seth Godin, is what can you deliver to clients on a specified time frame so that if they did not receive it, they would actually miss it? In other words, how are you going to entertain your clients? Not in a rom-com way, but in an engaging, “I want to see what comes next” kind of way. Make great promises and keep them. Enough with the underpromise, over-delivering BS. Show up with a long-term sense of engagement, on your terms, that matters and is actually interesting to your clients—and also to you and your team.

The single-greatest opportunity in front of designers is actually not better design. Yes, design will improve, but production of your design and your ability to demonstrate how it will unfold is still in its nascency. Your clients (as I am sure many clients of many designers just like you) are literally screaming for you to do better. You do better by going first. You are the storyteller you choose to be. Let your frustration remind you that to be a great storyteller you actually own the path, the tension and the resolution over and over again until it is done. No more mailing it in or ticking boxes. Do better not just because you can but because it will be so much more fun for all involved. Good luck.

____________

Sean Low is the go-to business coach for interior designers. His clients have included Nate Berkus, Sawyer Berson, Vicente Wolf, Barry Dixon, Kevin Isbell and McGrath II. Low earned his law degree from the University of Pennsylvania, and as founder-president of The Business of Being Creative, he has long consulted for design businesses. In his Business Advice column for BOH, he answers designers’ most pressing questions. Have a dilemma? Send us an email—and don’t worry, we can keep your details anonymous.

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