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Telling a customer he is wrong – help needed dissuading them
Morning guys.
Today we had a customer in who insisted on having blue writing on TWO red vans. His design looked apalling, but he was very clear it was exactly how he wanted it.
You will hardly see the writing at a distance, let alone read it.
They are of course the colours of his rugby team!My question is this: How far should we go to dissuade him from this?
Is the customer ALWAYS right?
Simon.
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19 Replies
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suggest an outline? and show him the difference it will make…otherwise you have warned him and just do as he asks…
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Yes I think you should tell him that this will not look good.
Why not suggest putting a white outline around all of the lettering. The result will look so much better and he still gets his team colours. I’m sure if you show him a mock up he will see for himself what a huge difference it will make
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the customer is NOT always right!
one of our longest served customer uses an expensive design house.
a new corporate design was sent to us for a re-brand. it was red text on blue background. i insisted he have it changed and even cut him his brand in vinyl and in my own suggestion. put it onto a board and went to meet him. his words in the end were… "i can see what you mean, but my design house is well respected and know what they are doing b;ah blah blah"
we had to run with it in the end and did so for several years!
the same design house then changed it to the colours and similar style we suggested, but after "a couple years". i saw their brief and it said, moving to fresher colours and more modern style bla blah. this was over 100 vehicles later!
only so much you can do, but yes i would still stress and try sway them "if possible". -
Always a tricky one, the balance of your experience against the stubbornness of his ego, chances are even if you attempt to dissuade him and he doesn’t like it he will still say "your the expert, you should have known better".
Not easy but when i have had this situation in the past with printing onto blinds i always use third party stories " i had a customer once blah blah blah", it protects their ego but also tends to get across that maybe they should listen to your experience, hope this helps but and good luck 😀 😀 -
Your wife walks into the living room wearing nothing but a thong and bra only and says thats her ready to go to your office party!
1. Do you tell her that she would be better off putting that new dress on?
2. Or suggest the new trouser suit?
3. Refuse to take her?
At the end of the day its your image that gets effected by their decision
Hope that helps 😀
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Yes………at the end of the day they are right.
I would try to explain why something else ‘may’ look better but at the end of the day beauty is in the eye of the beholder…..especially if they are paying.
Sign forums are full of people telling everyone else how good their designs are but wondering why they can’t make a full time living out of it when crap designers give their customers exactly what they want and make a good living doing it.
Just my take on it.
John
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Im certainly with John T on this one…
at the end of the day they are paying…Id just not put one of my advertising stickers on the back.
If you refused to do it, ..whos to say he doesn’t have another 100 of these to do, or a mate he bigs you up to for doing exactly what he wanted…
now if a customer wanted me to fit crap vinyl…thats a different story…he IS wrong and id refuse to do it because that WOULD come back to haunt me.Theres no accounting for taste
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you could try and put the design on a photo of his van And then convert to grey scale Which should show how bad the contrast is If the design doesn’t stand out in grey scale Then mostly it wont catch eye easily When shooting past anyone on the road
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Some great suggestions there thanks!
We have tried again, and failed, to persuade him. We used the contrast thing, and showed him some other options using different colours and outlines etc.
Since we are far too greedy to let him get away, we will do the job in secret and NOT stick our badge on them!
… I need to wash my hands now!
Simon.
PS Vic
😀 😀 😀 -
"Your wife walks into the living room wearing nothing but a thong and bra only and says thats her ready to go to your office party"
Can you supply pictures to explain this ?
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quote Martin Oxenham:“Your wife walks into the living room wearing nothing but a thong and bra only and says thats her ready to go to your office party”
Can you supply pictures to explain this ?
maybe she had no intention of going to the office party…
just my take on it. -
I would still like to see the pictures !
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quote Martin Oxenham:I would still like to see the pictures !
:roll:… 😀
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I always make the customer take my "SQUINT" test when they absolutely want a bad contrast. Just last week I had one in, business card in hand thrust under my nose. "You don’t want that mate" I said, "Oh yes I do mate" came the reply. *sigh* So I typed in a few letters and coloured it in accordingly and then dragged and copied it and stuck an outline around it. Then I told my customer to squint his eyes until one of them disappeared and told him to tell me which one disappeared first. Point proven and no more hassle. (chat.) (:) (hot)
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Update we have successfully persuaded customer to have white outline round letters.
Result!Phill and Cheryl 1; Customer, 0
Simon
😀 😀 😀
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Always good to offer a little guidance but if its not wanted then I just proceed with the job as they want it….. but keep out of sight when doing it :peek:
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Good to see you managed to persuade them to change, I had the same colour combination on some wagons to do, pale blue on red and that actually made our eyes water, you couldn’t see the lettering.
He still insisted on having it so that’s how it was done.Steve
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I can recollect a guy phoning me up and asking for some lettering to be put on his van. When I asked what colour he would like the lettering he said dark blue. I asked him the make and model of his van.
So I got to work and designed his artwork and sent through a proof to which he said that’s great. So I cut everything ready for fitting the next day
Come the day to fit, he brought the vehicle round. As he drove up I was shocked to see that his van was dark blue -
i wonder if these fellas were colour blind…
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