Comments on: Do You Have a Vampire Problem?

By: Brad Harmon

Brad Harmon — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 02:53:25 +0000

My experience has shown that most entrepreneurs start their businesses to provide a better product or service than is currently available and naturally want to go that extra mile for their clients. When they start out they are so glad to have any clients that they cheerfully accept these "vampires" not knowing that they will slowly suck the energy out of them.

Once they have been identified, I find that most entrepreneurs use the ignore them and hope they go away on their own method of dealing with them. But most "vampires" are stubborn and will do a lot of damage to your employee's morale and your company's reputation before they are finished. The best approach is the "it's me not you" break up.

"I realize that you have been unhappy with us for some time now. Though we have tried our best to meet your expectations, I do not feel that we are able to do so. You deserve to have a company that can do so and we will do everything we can to make sure the transition to that company is as smooth as possible for you."

Most of the time they will try to talk you into keeping them as clients, but hold firm and continue to stress that you are only thinking of them.

P.S. I love the design of your website. Very clean and crisp!

By: Jeffrey Tang

Jeffrey Tang — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 12:04:19 +0000

That's a good point, Kye. Not all vampire clients are vampires by choice. Sometimes they just haven't entered the business relationship with the right mindset.

By: Jeffrey Tang

Jeffrey Tang — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 12:03:17 +0000

Sounds like I've got another addition to my reading list, haha :) Thanks for the recommendation. You know, people always talk about the amount of information available online … but it's amazing how much information's just floating around out there in print.

By: kye

kye — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 03:06:27 +0000

Jeffrey, that's a simple, powerful question ('if all my clients were like this, could I still run a successful business?'). I'll use this next time I start feeling that something's not quite right with a client.

I used to have a client who was a vampire–the interesting thing is that she was not an obvious one. She was friendly and well-meaning. But week in and week out she really drained me. She was making it much harder to do the rest of my work. Your test question would have been great to use in that situation.

By: Thekla Richter

Thekla Richter — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 04:42:48 +0000

Thanks for sharing this Jeffrey… some great insights here. I especially like the way you differentiate people who want you to grovel vs. take responsibility.

By: Anastasiya

Anastasiya — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 02:46:06 +0000

Jeffrey, that's a great article.
I've been working in customer service for a while and I totally understand what vampire clients are. Sometimes they made me so mad that I thought I would explode. No matter what you do they are not satisfied and they will never be. After all there is no ideal service that will be perfect for every client. You can actually do them a favor by refusing to deal with them, maybe they will find what they need somewhere else.

By: Madeleine

Madeleine — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 18:52:43 +0000

Jeffrey, A really helpful post and very much to the point. Your list of differences between vampires and customers with the right to be upset is excellent. From time to time, the engineering company I worked for in Boston had vampires as clients. And you're absolutely correct about what a huge waste of time and energy it is to deal with them.

By the way, years ago I came across and skimmed a book called Emotional Vampires. I remember that it had a near-perfect description of my then-supervisor. She was an Emotional Vampire of the Perfectionist Type. The book may still be available

By: jsdixon

jsdixon — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 12:06:12 +0000

That reminds me a lot of what Howard Roarke from Ayn Rand's Fountainhead would do. He would only build his houses for certain customers, as he was in a tough business so that he could set his own terms.

By: Krishna

Krishna — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 09:13:07 +0000

Brilliant, everyone spends a lot of time stressing “good customer service” and “client is king” but the vampire customer is a real problem. Especially when you start out freelancing. Very important, as you say, to hunt and stamp out the vampires :-).

One more flag to identify vampire clients, I think, is if/whether they pay on time. Following up on invoices is always such a chore for the new entrepreneur, that we tend to ignore any “problem clients”, but if you are not getting paid, time to ask if you have a vampire on your hands :-).

Great post, looking forward to more practical tips ahead!

By: LPC

LPC — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 02:02:11 +0000

This is so true. You want customers who will lead you, not drag behind you like a penance.