What is the best method for dealing with extremely demanding customers?
Leaving comments nonstop in 10-15 minute intervals.
Threatening to give a one star rating if we do not respond in 30 minutes.
Modifying the theme using incorrect css, and blaming us when their code doesn’t work.
We just posted our first item and we are doing our best to provide the best support we could.
But one customer is literally taking 70% of our time. Some of our developer are even
reviewing their code and correcting their css for them. We want the customer to be happy,
but at a certain point it just starts feeling like abuse.
How should an author proceed in a situation like this?
make sure you screenshot, have evidence of their behaviour
once it reaches a point of no return then explain (politely) that you are happy to help within reason but that the requests are beyond the scope of support https://themeforest.net/page/item_support_policy
if they want to take it to envato then let them. If they rate you 1 star then as long as you have the screenshots and evidence, envato should help you remove it.
Even in the unlikely event that envato didn’t remove it - long term trying to help people like this just is not worth it and unfair though it may seem I can be easier just to let them rate what they want if it means you don’t have to take up any more of your time on it.
I had the exact same thing where if I didn’t help them within a certain period of time (it was the weekend too!) they would 1 star me before I even had a chance to respond. Luckily, all their comments were still on my item page and so once I told Envato, the user’s rating was removed due to the evidence.
Just try and act as professionally as you can. Sometimes you can get pulled down to their level and you want to say something that you might regret later, but just try to appear calm and collective. You’ll always get one bad apple every now and then.
Thank you for the advice. We have been extremely patient and professional. We really don’t mind helping out, but it just
seems to more you help out, the demands keep growing. I guess we will start notifying him that his request
falls beyond Envato’s customer support scope.
That’s exactly the danger - I get why you d this (you are not alone) but there has to be a line.
The policy is clear - quite often it’s best not to over detail these things. Unfortunately (buyers and authors) often do not to read terms, conditions and policies and just agree to them without bothering to check the details. I doubt even if envato put the support policy on the purchase page (which they would never do as a UX perspective) it would make any difference to the vast majority who would still not check it.
Gonna start handing out a default response, worded as follows.
Hello. I regret to inform you that your current customer support request falls beyond the scope of Envato’s Customer support requirements. Please refer to the following link in order to see what kind of issues are covered by customer support. We will be happy to help you in areas where the request falls within this scope.
yeah i am with you, one of a buyer take 50% of our effort for an item, he even ask us to build menu for him, change style, when he broke something, he ask us to rebuild for him. and I doublt his perception, buying a theme means you will get a fulltime working team for his own project. You know, he even ask us “hey this support forum is cool, can you help me to create one like this…” Nahhhh.
He chases us in every topics we just answered and paste question any topic he wants (even irrelevant to the original one) nad he was not the topic creator.
Cannot be nice all the time. Anytime he gave a nice noteice about support policy, he said I see and then just be the same again. created 100+ topic, nearly 300+ replies that are in his own topics or jump into others’.
As a forum moderator, I even want to ban him…or block IP.
unfortunately, he is a buyer of our theme. There seems to be no way to actively refund and let him be out of our future.
He is a ghost who obsesses our support team since day 1 be bought our item.
yeah, buyers are now very aggressive and think we are their cheap staff…they think the theme author should finish their work and deliver the site to their clients for free…(or at least with the fee of a theme).
It’s very hard to get a 5 stars but if you don’t you can get 1 star rate whenever their client complain on them or just because the weather is not good today.