OS and Software > No, I Will Not Fix Your #@$!! Computer > Lost clients - How do you handle it?

Lost clients - How do you handle it?

I have always held that if you are going to take my job, you better be at lease as good as I am. There is a 3 ring binder with everything you need to know, read it. When I got there no one held my hand and you should not expect me to hold yours. That said, if you need help my hourly rate is $100 per hour on a consulting bases, or $125 if I get my hands dirty.

reply to Oedipus
I have always looked at it as being "just business" and avoided letting it get to me. That doesn't mean that there haven't been times it infuriated me or put me into a funk. I've stuck to remaining professional, wrapping things up, and moving along. And, spending a little time doing a post mortem to identify things that I should look out for and handle differently going forward. Remaining cool on your client-facing side is the important thing: You never know when or where you will again encounter people from previous engagements so, unless they absolutely despise you, leaving them with good regard for you is important. And, these days, no matter how good a working relationship is, brand loyalty is considered a relic of the past by more and more of the management coming online. Everyone knows "someone who can do it" and many are hell bent on surrounding themselves with people of their choosing no matter the price.

As for transition responsibilities/obligations, I address that in the service agreement. If I am handing the reins to a permanent employee, or we just come to the end of the road and it's no longer mutually beneficial, I'll offer a lot more goodwill. However, if they're dumping my firm for a competitor because of wallet or internal politics issues, they get only as much as I feel they should. How I word it in the agreement depends on the nature of the engagement and the scope of work. Generally, I stipulate the level of expertise/competence required to do the work, offer an "up to" window for transition, and also the option to not assist if my replacement cannot "keep up" with what I'm conveying. Unfortunately, the latter has been happening too much over the last few years. I have lost a few clients to companies that significantly undercut my fees by providing just-landed Indians who can't fight their way out of a wet paper sacks with sharp knives. I just tell the client "Good luck and goodbye" if the guys can't figure out what they're supposed to do from reading what I wrote. A few of those companies have wound up coming back to me after the Slushy guys blew up the business on them.
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"Dance like the photo isn't being tagged; love like you've never been unfriended; and tweet like nobody is following."

reply to Oedipus
The only experience I've had was this was when my position was outsourced. I was offer a position with the company, complete with 25% pay cut. I took a severance package. I asked almost weekly for the two months I was still there to get their people in for training. The day before I left they brought in a new person. It was enough to introduce them to the important people and show them the building's infrastructure, which was currently in the middle of a major renovation. Wished them good luck and went on with my life.

I guess my opinion is that you should be as professional as possible, so if/when, things go south, you have your hands clean as you provided everything they asked for and/or needed. If possible get sign offs that you provided everything they requested. In the end you want the customers to come back to you.

My thoughts are you want to command a premium due to the great service you provide. You don't want the customer to have any reason to bad mouth you.
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“Progress isn't made by early risers. It's made by lazy men trying to find easier ways to do something.” ¯ Robert A. Heinlein

reply to Oedipus
Its business, so treat it like that. When their cut off, don't do or offer any free services, they dropped you "because its business" you return the same.

I'm not suggesting you be spiteful, but if they want your services, they have to pay for them and when someone wants a short term contract, it costs more than long term.

While everyone has an opinion and their experiences, I have found once someone makes the decision to go else where for services, you never going to get them back long term, so if they come looking for help, charge them full market rates for that support.

Oh and make sure its all in writing!

reply to Oedipus
I give the client all the information they request. I do not deal directly with the new people unless the client is also involved (i.e. copied on the emails and/or on the phone calls).

I do not give advice or insight.

And I don't expect any different from outgoing support when we take a client.

reply to Oedipus
The only time I had this happen was when our company lost the IT contract for a state agency. Not only did the contract include what we were doing (at the time implementing and supporting an enterprise management system), but also the help desk.
I was cut loose before the actual turnover. I turned in what I had documented. I don't think our portion of the IT work was going to really impact the new company, but the help desk part was going to be a nightmare for them. They had no clue what they were getting into. I moved on, found another gig.
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I'm actually not funny, I'm just really mean and people think I'm joking.

reply to Oedipus
Thanks for the insight, guys. I'm definitely keeping things professional with the client, but there has been some friction between us and the new IT staff. They wanted us to expose our RDS server to the WAN (!!!) so that they don't have to create a VPN tunnel between their office and our office. We balked, of course, and now that they are pretty much being forced into creating a tunnel, they wont give us their internal IP schema (just the first three octets and the subnet) because that's apparently a more serious security risk than what they requested from us.

Being replaced is one thing, but we got replaced by idiots. That hurts.

Incompetence like that I document and report to the client and copy management at the offending firm. There's no telling what could happen down the road that someone could try to pin on you. They'll think twice beforehand; if not they'll regret it.
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"Dance like the photo isn't being tagged; love like you've never been unfriended; and tweet like nobody is following."

reply to Oedipus
for those that have taken over a site, have you ever had the prior IT staff not hand over all/any passwords?