When I was writing earlier this morning about how to cope with having other’s problems dumped in your lap in your home business operations, I thought about how a “sister” topic for me is those individuals who pester–they make repeated calls with repeated demands and nitpick over all sorts of tiny details. They might not give you time to call them back, or they may think of a dozen excuses to call or send e-mails. If you only have one or two clients, this might not seem like such a big deal, but if you’ve got a full roster of clients or customers, one who pesters can take up far more than their fair share of your time and resources…
I can get pretty cold-hearted when it comes to those who pester. I know that there are others who appreciate being reminded and feel like those eager customers deserve their best efforts, but I tend to feel just the opposite. If I have been really clear and have done my part in letting the other person know what I can do for them, when, and what the parameters of our working arrangement are and then they continue to make demands and send a copious amount of emails or phone calls, I can get annoyed. While I know there will always be those individuals, it does not make my job any easier or seem to fair to the others when I have to spend a great deal of extra time on one or two pestering sorts.
I talked this problem situation over with a couple of colleagues and here are some of the ideas they came up with: one person suggested that you charge an extra fee for extra time–if you are charging the person by the hour, just make sure that you keep track of all the extra contacts and include them in your invoice (be prepared for some resistance at first); if not, explain that you are going to start charging an extra service fee for any calls or requests over x amount for the month; another person suggested simply ignoring the requests while another said that she tries to tell them exactly how busy she is, how many other projects she is working on, etc. so that the person will get a better picture of why he cannot pester her with constant questions and requests. Does anyone else have any ideas for how to cope with and handle those folks who pester?
Also: Babysitting and Hand-holding