Inviting customer feedback - how do you handle this double edged sword?

urbanaries

Yet another thread on how picky/pushy customers drive me nuts.

How do you (or DONT you) encourage clients to make comments/edits on the photos? I once thought a full invitation and assurance that they'll have the opportunity to request changes/edits was a good thing, a sign of good customer service.

But recent experiences it opens up huge cans of worms. Even with proof delay, I'm spending so much time responding to comments/explaining/making edits on edits. Many have to do with the fact that they're looking at them on uncalibrated monitors, I suspect. How do you cope with this?

Three images from a recent session would have been unusable in film days (underexposed and WB off) but thanks to Lightroom I was able to salvage them in B/W. So of course, the client wants to order them in color too, so I reluctantly showed them, but now she's informing me the color's strange and I need to fix it. Yep! told ya so.

I know it is my duty to produce images of perfection, but I also don't think in film days, photographers were so vulnerable to the armchair quarterbacks.

I'm contemplating not mentioning the "you can place your comments/edits under the photo" feature at all in the future, and figure that way only glaring retouches/edits will be brought to my attention (please remove big zit, etc).

I just don't charge enough (even w/ recent price hikes) for this nonsense. I do think my end product speaks for itself, and I don't need help from the customer to get it there. (I fully admit there are times I need fellow dgrinners help, and I know when to seek it).

Thanks for always tolerating my rants, and offering me your vast experiential wisdom.

lynne

dragon300zx

urbanaries wrote:

encourage clients

Never, ever ever. Nope. Not unless I am encouraging them to spend way more money than they planned on.

You do want the clients to know they can come to you with requests but you also need to let them know some requests just are not feasible.

"Should you have any requests, or would like something edited please let us know. However not all requests or edits are doable. If your request is not something that can be reasonably accomplished we will let you know and we can explore the options that are available from there, to get you the photograph you are looking for."

Thus opening it up to let them know they can make a request but that their request can be denied, or that their request may end up costing more money (exploring the options ).

:dragon

Hey Andy on a side note, why isn't there a "Show Me The Money" smiley?