In some cases, your clients may not openly indicate that they are not satisfied with your work. While a good number of clients give feedback on the quality of the job done, the world of work is not short of cases where clients conceal signs that may indicate poorly done work.
Poorly done work does not sit well with clients. In fact, a client has all the reasons to reject subpar work, since it only meets the predetermined requirements, but also delays projects on the part of the client.
Depending on your field of work, it may be easy to grasp signs that clients are unhappy. However, there are situations where you clients may hide signs of discomfort and displeasure with your work.
Changes in Communication Patterns
If your client is not pleased with your work, the chances are high that they will reduce or even cut communications. If your client is communicating with you regularly, an abrupt change in the frequency of communication could be a hidden sign that the client is not impressed with your work.
Communication is what keeps people moving. It helps people in different locations to exchange ideas and information, and execute different tasks. An unhappy client may not tell you directly that they are not satisfied with your work, but they may choose to reduce or even cut off communications with you.
Delayed responses to messages is also a hidden sign that a client is losing interest in your work or you altogether.
Shrinking Workload
A client is highly likely to reduce the work they give if they are not satisfied with how you handle their tasks. This sign is often hard to notice since you are likely to assume that the volume of work has reduced for other reasons other than low quality work. However, that may not be the case.
A client may opt to reduce the number of jobs they give to you in response to the low quality work you have been handing in. A healthy working relationship relies on the ability to meet key deliverables, and quality work is at the center of these deliverables.
A reduction in the number of jobs could seem reasonable, but you may want to thoroughly evaluate the quality of the work you have been presenting to your client.
Repetition and Insistence On Deliverables
When a client assigns you a job, they expect that you are going to deliver the work within the given timeframe while conforming to a set of requirements. That is a rule of thumb when it comes to working.
However, when a client aims poorly done work, they may embark on a different strategy to show their displeasure or lack of satisfaction. This may be implicitly or explicitly. Since the focus here is on the implicit manner, we at Stern and Company want to clarify how the repetition of instructions regarding deliverables can be a hidden sign of an unsatisfied client.
Insistence on requirements may sometimes be an indication that a client expects more from you, and that they are not impressed with how you handled previous jobs. In this regard, therefore, you may want to re-evaluate the message that the client is sending when they insist on a particular set of deliverables when they assign you a job.
More Requests for Review
It is normal for a client to request a review of a job done. In most cases, a client asks for a review so that you can polish on some aspects that may not be clear within the task. However, unusual increased requests for review of work done is a hidden sign that the client is not satisfied with the work you are doing.
It is important to note that while a client may ask for a review multiple times so that they can get the best version of the work, it could also be a hidden signal that you are submitting subpar work.
An unsatisfied client does not have to show their displeasure of work done openly, but they may use proxy tactics like requesting more reviews to indicate that you need to up your game.
You might want to review the work you do if you notice that your client is requesting you to review or redo the tasks.
On a final note, clients are very different out there. They have different approaches to work, and sometimes it may be difficult to understand their perceptions about your work. You, therefore, have to do your best to build a healthy professional relationship and to continually be on the lookout for hidden signals that may indicate an unhappy client.