Tips on dealing with a difficult client contact

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Have you taken a step back to think about why they might be difficult? I once had a client who was literally going through cancer diagnosis. Yes, it made her emotional and erratic but there was a valid reason for it. So, in response we started to go to her in pairs and escalated if necessary.

I fully acknowledge that some clients can be difficult - I am now on the other side and can see my team get frustrated with auditor requests at time - however there’s usually a reason behind the difficult behaviour. Maybe they’ve been burned by auditors in the past? Try to pair up (it can help to have your senior/manager with you to provide a different perspective on the requests) or escalate if it’s out of control.

Trust me, most clients want to help you so they can get back to their day jobs!

Good luck OP

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A pretty bad example where the Partner didn’t review the subsidiary accounts and missed the deadlines (although they’d had the accounts for four weeks already, and we had the email receipts). Looks like the manager and below didn’t review the accounts properly and then partner, in day he was meant to sign, had a lot of questions which they couldn’t answer (he was new). We didn’t find out until 5pm on signing date (a Friday) and had to push back all the board meetings (and had a pretty angry CFO). It’s fair enough for a partner to have questions, but the timing and inadequacy of initial reviews really burnt us and made our accounting team look bad to the board. It wasn’t a great experience.

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give them the ol' upper decker.

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Can confirm this is actually effective

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