My First-Ever Negative Feedback — and What I'm Doing About it

Have you ever had a client complain about your service? I hadn’t — at least not until last week. In fact, my clients are usually highly complimentary about my service, as can be seen from these testimonials. Receiving negative feedback can be a bit emotional, but I’ve tried to keep this (rather lengthy — sorry!) blog as balanced as possible.

This particular client (I’ll call them Client X for now) had a cleaning tender they wanted to respond to for a local council in the Sydney area, and they engaged me to develop their response. The agreed deliverables were:

  • An integrated Health, Safety, Quality and Environmental Management system and a set of Safe Work Method Statements relevant to the cleaning sector. I purchase these from Safety Culture at a discount, which enables me to customise everything with the essential information, such as the client’s logo and company details. I sent Client X a link to the draft documentation so he could see exactly what he would be buying.

All of the tender response schedules (developed based on information provided by Client X)

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Time was a little short as it took Client X a week to pay my deposit invoice and send through the information required, leaving just five days until I needed to complete the first draft of the response. 

I’d committed to a specific date for the draft response in my original proposal so Client X would have three full days (Saturday, Sunday, and Monday) to review the draft and let me know any changes required so I could get the submission finalised before the tender deadline of 10:00 a.m. on that Tuesday.

As part of the tender response document submission, Client X needed to complete some OH&S forms, which I sent them from their new integrated HSEQ Management System. All forms throughout the system were customised with Client X's logo, the business owner's name, the date of creation and the date of review. 

The forms were sent to Client X on Tuesday (the day after I started work on the response), and all that was needed was for the client to add a few details and signatures relating to the training of his staff, then scan and send them back to me.

On that Wednesday, I recommended to Client X that the tender submission could be enhanced by including a cleaning schedule for the public amenities and other buildings that Client X was bidding for. Client X responded that this wouldn’t be a problem and that they would complete it the next day.

All good so far — we were in regular communication each day, and by Friday afternoon (and after burning the candle at both ends for several — very long — days), I was able to send Client X a link to two Dropbox folders containing the tender submission with eight Appendices, and the completed and fully customised HSEQ Management System. I also emailed a summary of the information still needed.

Over the weekend, I received no contact from Client X, so on Monday morning, I sent an email reminding them that I was still waiting on some crucial information and raising concerns that the tender submission was due the next day and I hadn’t yet received any feedback whatsoever, or the requested information. 

I also called Client X at 9:13 a.m. and left a voice message asking them to provide feedback and outstanding information. Around noon on Monday, I received the cleaning schedule  — awesome, thanks. 

At 3:00 p.m. on Monday, I received the scans of the OH&S forms, with a note from Client X that the name of the authorising person I added to the form was incorrect (I’d used his Christian name, “Rick” —  which is how he signed off on his emails —  rather than the more formal “Richard”). 

So, to continue with my story of my real-life example of a negative feedback, client X asked if I could change these but also noted that it could be left as is if necessary. Since, by this stage, we were only three business hours away from the submission deadline, I told client X that there wasn’t really time to make the change and send him the new forms so he could complete them again. 

I also told him that I would ensure that all 150 or so references to ‘Rick” in the whole HSEQ Management System for his tender response were updated in the next day or so. The HSEQ Management System itself didn’t need to be uploaded as part of the response, but the four OHS forms already completed by Client X did.

At 3:00 p.m. on Monday, Client X also sent me all of the information required for the pricing response as a scanned PDF. There was an error as the numbers didn’t add up, so I queried them at 4:30 p.m. At 6:30 p.m., he confirmed an error, and I updated the pricing details.

At 7:30 p.m., Client X advised that he was downloading everything for his bid submission and asked a question about the electronic lodgement of the tender. At 8:30 p.m., I followed up to check if Client X had been able to lodge the submission okay. 

At 9:00 p.m., he replied with a few minor changes, which were updated by 9:10 p.m. At 9:43,p.m. Client X requested a few more minor changes, which were updated at 7:00 a.m. the following day. There were now just three hours to go before the tender submission deadline.

At 8:55 a.m., client X emailed me asking again if I could change the name “Rick” to “Richard” on the four completed OHS forms that had been sent to me as PDFs the day before. 

I responded that this wasn’t possible as there simply wasn’t enough time — and I pointed out that the Council would be more concerned about the completeness of the response than they would about the spelling of a name on a form, which they were unlikely to notice.

Between 9:16 a.m. and 9:31 a.m. on Tuesday, I received three phone calls from him advising that they were having difficulties downloading the response to tender documents and asking me to email them as PDFs and Word/Excel documents, which I did. 

By this stage, there were less than 30 minutes to the deadline. During those phone conversations, Client X did not raise any concerns with me.

Later that day, I emailed him thanking them for their business, wishing them good luck and attaching my invoice for the balance owed. Some weeks later - after two follow-up emails, a text and a voice message - I received an email from Client X stating that they did not intend to pay my invoice as they did not receive their expected service. The issues they raised for this negative feedback were:

  • I should not have asked them to provide so much information.

  • I should have developed the cleaning schedule for them (even though I am not a cleaner and do not know how long or in which order their cleaning activities would take place).

  • I refused to change “Rick” to “Richard”, meaning that the four OHS records provided with the submission were incorrect.

  • There were a few minor errors in the tender submission (which I changed as soon as they raised it), indicating I had not completed any proofreading. I always proofread. But client X was correct. I should have picked these up.

  • I was told multiple times that the Dropbox link to all the files was not working (incorrect).

  • They asked me multiple times to send the documents to them by email (the only request for this was received on the morning that the tender was due) and that I received the final email too late to submit (on this point, I did check the Council’s tender website which acknowledged that a submission had been received from Client X).

  • I had used an existing tender response template not customised to their business (incorrect).

  • I did not complete any work at all, and I just made a few minor changes to the information they provided (incorrect).

  • They felt that the deposit paid was too much for the work completed and expected some or all of it to be refunded.

I responded to this by reminding them of the timeline of events and letting them know that I had developed a lot of material for the response, customised it to meet the tender requirements, and that I had definitely not received multiple requests to fix an (apparently) broken dropbox link and to email the documents to them. 

Further to my response to his negative feedback, I told client X that I believed I had delivered the services as per my initial proposal to them. But as a gesture of goodwill, I would reduce my final invoice by 50%, provided they pay it within seven days. I also told them I would commence recovery action if they did not pay my invoice within this timeframe.

Client X responded by saying that he had sent me 15 emails on that Friday night — that he followed up with multiple phone calls on Saturday and Sunday and again on Monday, during the day and on Monday night. He also stated that if I did not refund at least 50% of the initial deposit, he and others would post negative reviews about my service. 

He also asked for a full refund of the cost of the HSEQ Management System and SWMS I purchased from Safety Culture as they were “not deemed accurate”. I provided Client X with a link to the documentation before purchasing these on his behalf so he knew exactly what he would be getting. These documents are developed by Safety Culture themselves and are in line with ISO requirements.

A negative review is the last thing I would want to receive from my clients, so I had to ensure I’ve done my job well. So, to continue, I responded that I did not receive any emails at all from him over the weekend, and my call records showed no calls from him until Tuesday morning. I asked him to send me copies of the emails sent on Friday and over the weekend.

Two hours later, client X did send me a number of emails that were apparently sent to me over the weekend. Some of these asked for acknowledgement that I had received them, and one, on Sunday afternoon, was marked urgent. It also expressed concerns that I had not replied, which, if true, was truly leading to negative feedback.

But the truth is, until the emails were forwarded to me (now more than two weeks after the submission deadline had closed), I did not receive any of them at all. Why? I have no idea — I checked my junk folder and trash to see if I had somehow accidentally deleted them, but no emails were lurking. 

I simply do not know how a dozen or so emails could have failed to reach me. All but one of these were replies to the same email (so one email with a trail of 10 others), and the email address shown on them is correct. 

These tender response document emails were sent from a Hotmail address, so I guess it is possible that there was a Hotmail issue over that weekend, but I really don’t know.

I successfully received emails from many other people over the days concerned. I honestly have no idea why I didn’t receive the emails from client X. It is, perhaps, unfortunate that when I raised concerns on that Monday morning that I had not yet heard from him, he didn’t refer me to the emails (and apparent phone calls) over the weekend. 

In fact, the emails he sent me on Monday ended with “Thanks!” and “Thanks very much!” rather than expressing any dissatisfaction or at least a tiny example of negative feedback that I hadn’t responded to the weekend emails.

At the end of the day, though, the emails that Client X sent me as evidence of his responses over the weekend certainly look genuine. So, I believe they were sent to - but not received by - me. But as to calls and text messages, I most definitely didn’t receive any of these. 

If I had, I would have a record of them on my phone (and I don’t receive that many calls and texts that I would fail to notice a client was trying to contact me just a few days before the tender submission deadline).

Final Thoughts

So, what have I learned from this whole mess? Well, for starters, I’m changing my proposal document, noting that I will usually respond to all emails the same day they are received. 

But if we are less than three days from the deadline and I have not responded, please call or text me to confirm the emails have been received. I will also start emailing, calling and texting my clients if we are just days away from the tender deadline and they haven’t responded to requests for feedback or information.

I now have a highly critical and negative review on Google Business — one that states I was very unprofessional and non-responsive and used a template downloaded from the internet to complete the response. By way of response, I have included a link to this blog. Someone I don’t know but can only assume that it is one of Client X’s friends has also left one.

Perhaps the most unfortunate aspect of all of this is that if the weekend emails had been raised with me on Monday morning and resent at that time, I would have been able to address every issue that was raised, most of which were very minor and took only a few moments to fix.

It seems to me there were two issues and negative feedback unresolved. One was an update to a staff member’s resume. I didn’t update it because I didn’t receive the email relating to the resume. The second issue — which seems to have been a big issue for Client X — was the development of the cleaning schedule. 

I’m still unsure how Client X thought I could develop this when I don’t know the logical order of cleaning activities, how long each task would take or when periodical tasks would take. 

But if I had known this was such an issue on that Monday morning, I would have discussed it with them and then developed something as best as I could, and I wouldn’t have received my first-ever negative feedback.

Will I follow up on the payment of my overdue invoice? Probably not. I’ve spent far too much time on this already.