How to Handle Abusive Clients

Advice from a former agency punching bag

Television shows often glorify the lives of professionals in client service roles. Whether it’s Billions, House of Lies, or Mad Men, the main characters always seem to be jet setting in first class, eating Michelin-star dinners with clients or drinking top-shelf liquor with back-stage passes and exclusive after-party access.

Yeah…no. That’s not even remotely close to how it really works.

In certain industries, some of these things are true, some of the time. But these special, exclusive-access moments are less than 5% of the job — not 90% as shown on TV. The glossed over reality is grueling long hours spent trying to wrangle clients at the goat rodeo.

I know what reality looks like because I lived it. By lived it, I mean it swallowed my life. Ten plus years leading agency teams on massive corporate accounts. I’ve worked with some real gems. True diamonds in the rough. Some clients had an extra special talent for making life miserable for anyone in their path.

These kinds of clients can have significant negative effects on your mental health, anxiety, and even depression. When you inevitably run into a client (or even a coworker), who is unwilling to respect your feelings or boundaries, do you know what to do?

It can be tricky to handle because the most abusive clients know how to use their leverage to cut through any defense you might mount to protect yourself. They know exactly how much money their company pays yours, and they will use that to their advantage.

Over the years, I’ve seen a lot of bad client behavior, ranging from sexual harassment to bullying, sexism, racism, willful deception, psychologically abusive behavior, Machiavellian manipulation, and gaslighting.

Abusive clients can turn on you in a flash to distract attention from their own behavior — so it’s important you’re ready and know how to protect yourself.

1. Collect Evidence and Build a Case

In every client relationship involving questionable behavior, a necessary step is to document evidence of poor or abusive treatment of staff, lies told, and attempted manipulative behavior.

You will likely want to immediately flag any egregious behavior — such as direct personal harassment or fraudulent accounting practices. But be careful not to run allegations up the flag pole without evidence because senior leaders could become dismissive of future reports.

At some client service companies, the reality is that senior managers will be hesitant to call out clients on bad behavior. They don’t want to jeopardize revenue, and, sadly, many companies would rather sacrifice staff to abusive behavior than lose a revenue stream. If you determine that your company operates this way, my advice is to look for the door.

Advice: Senior managers will need written documentation (versus verbal statements) to feel comfortable taking action. It’s best to build a case and demonstrate a trend of abusive behavior over time before elevating your claim.

2. Set Firm Boundaries

Abusive clients are notorious for imposing on any work-life boundaries that you set. I’ve had clients start emailing at 5 am every day, and others that regularly wouldn’t stop until after 1 am.

While it can be tempting to be responsive after regular work hours to demonstrate a commitment to their business, just know that clients will come to expect this level of service all the time. It can be harder to take a step back and establish boundaries once a precedent has been set.

Advice: Intentionally setting firm boundaries can help you try to corral out-of-control clients who may have no work-life boundaries themselves. This will also prevent you from burning out.

3. Prioritize Requests, Don’t Be a Fire Fighter

One of the primary ways that clients can take advantage of staff (and their stress levels) is by claiming everything is an emergency fire drill that needs to be taken care of immediately. When you fall into this kind of cycle, you become reactive and lose complete control of your days.

While an ever-frantic client might truly think that everything is an emergency, it’s not. I’ve worked with many clients like this, it’s typically just a symptom of their own dysfunctional work style and inability to push back on and prioritize requests from internal colleagues.

Advice: It’s worth a bit of push back to help them get organized and more realistic about how much work can be handled under reasonable deadlines. Sending a daily priorities email every morning can help. If you need to, tap a senior leader to help you heard the cats.

4. Watch Out for Extra Work, Investment Time

If budgets are tight and manipulative clients are in a pinch, they love to try to convince you to promise to “invest” staff time and deliver work for free. I have found that this is particularly true in the advertising, content, and marketing world (this video about work on spec is phenomenal and…depressing).

In advertising and marketing businesses, clients can try to exert significant pressure in one-on-one situations to try to extract a promise for this kind of free labor. If you submit to their request, you’ll likely have to answer to your finance department and may be chastised internally.

Advice: The best approach here is a quick sidestep. Simply defer to your senior managers and note that those decisions are above your pay grade. Once they know you’re elevating it, they will likely just drop it altogether.

5. Expose or Avoid the Bullying and Belittling

Unfortunately, this is a highly common tactic today. There are certain Fortune 500 companies that run on threats and fear. It can be a management philosophy that starts at the top and permeates the entire workforce.

As I explain in this piece, bullies can be very clever and hide much of their bad behavior from anyone who can get them in trouble. In my experience, their behavior isn’t likely to change. From experience, I can tell you that direct confrontation doesn’t often work out well.

Advice: If you can’t catch this behavior in email, you can try to expose them by having a senior member of your team joint a conference call and listen in silently. If you’ve become a target, the best move might just be rotating to a different team.

6. Don’t Take the Bait

Abusive clients often try to demonstrate their power and control by manipulating others’ thoughts and behavior. It gives them a sick sense of satisfaction. To do this, they will try to set you off, usually over email.

I once had an abusive client send me a full-page email “because he cared enough to take the time out of his weekend to give me important feedback to help me.” His comments were attempts to rile me up. He wanted me to blow up over email and give him the ammunition he could use to punish me.

Advice: Give yourself a pat on the back for spotting their manipulative attempt. Go blow of some steam and then respond in a calm and collected manner. Your measured response will make it clear that they don’t have control over your emotions (which will piss them off).

7. Client Threats to Talk to Your Boss, Pull their Business

This is actually a kind of bully tactic, but it’s frequently used and important to know how to navigate. Ultimately, you can’t control what a bully chooses to say to your boss about you or your results. Giving senior managers a direct line of sight into the state of the business and client is your best bet.

The threat of pulling the business is what I like to call their “nuclear option.” It’s typically a tactic that they pull out of their toolbox when their back is against the wall, and they aren’t getting their way. Unless your client has the power to pull the business themselves, it’s usually just an idle threat. The reality is that they will likely need to gain approval from their bosses, and there will be more red tape than they would like to handle.

Advice: Your best defense is being proactive with senior management. Give them regular updates on the account and the state of your abusive client. They will be appreciative if you give them a warning that trouble might be brewing. Many managers know how to deflect client vitriol and talk them down.

The Bottom Line

Working with abusive clients can be a trying experience. I’ve spent countless nights lying awake and agonizing over what to do to prevent them from taking advantage of me or my colleagues. Some preparation is valuable to be sure, but don’t fixate on every possible outcome.

Since I’ve made it through on the other side of these situations, I can tell you that you actually can learn a fair bit from these experiences.

Sure, I do have some psychological scars from the experiences, but I’ve also walked away with a fuller bag of tools to handle difficult situations. Given some of the behavior that we see in America today, these are tools that will come in handy for the rest of my life.

Based on my experiences, here are a few other parting words of wisdom:

1. Remember that anything they say doesn’t define you. Don’t give them the power control your emotions.
2. Their words are a reflection of what’s going on inside of them. Just imagine how awful they must feel inside underneath all of their anger and projection.
3. Don’t waste time trying to make sense of their actions. Reason and logic may not apply.
4. Take a step back and widen the lens. The worst that can happen is that you lose a job; it likely wasn’t that great if you were stuck dealing with such an @sshole in the first place.
5. Don’t let them bring you down to their level. It can be tempting to fight fire with fire and become manipulative and passive-aggressive. You’re better than them.
6. Once you’ve handled a few abusive clients, you know what tricks they have in the bag. You’ll be able to see them coming a mile away.
7. Where you work is your choice. Don’t forget that. You’re never chained to a terrible job.

Good luck out there.

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