Part one of my newbie guide to running a design business dealt with the essentials of getting a project off the ground, and winning a potential project / tender. Part two aims to deal with keeping a client happy. Including issues such as testing your developed site, after sale customer service – and the tools and sites which help do achieve this.
Testing
Assuming you’ve got your site working and uploaded, its time to test your project. Steven Snell has put together a great article recently on browser testing tools. These are the on and offline resource you can potentially use to test your site across many different browsers. With any software product you need to be prepared for when things go wrong. As wise man once said to me “shit happens”. Get Exceptional is a web based exception tracker for you Ruby folk, as I’m using the .NET framework on most projects, there are a couple of options available – Elmah is a logging framework which gives you such brilliance as RSS feeds of exceptions as they happen.
Another .NET alternative is Log4Net, which allows you to use different “providers” to plug and play logging into your project. If however you are dealing primarily with javascript and frontend work, then you won’t really have to worry about any of the above server side stuff.
After Sale
Things don’t end once you’ve delivered. A good freelancer / business owner will always look for ways of going a bit further with a client, after the cheque hits your door mat. Customer relationship management tools such as SugarCRM and VTiger are both great open source tools for freelancers on a budget.
Inside these you should be maintaining information on client’s likes / dislikes / favourite sports / personal life. No one, no matter how good a people person is going to remember the fine details of 100+ clients – once you hit that level. Make life easier on yourself, before you make a courtesy call, to refresh yourself on your clients.
You are making courtesy calls right?
Courtesy calls are essential in building loyalty, brand and above all repeat business. They allow you to touch base on the service a client has received from you, best of all they allow you to tap into the client’s needs, wants and desires. They can even shed light on technology related problems your client maybe having in other areas, and allows you to garner repeat business. You will never find out how a tiger hunts by going to the zoo, instead you have to go to the jungle. Thankfully the internet provides a great way of researching market opinion on the cheap.
If you aren’t confident in making phone calls, email marketing solutions might be useful for you to make repeat contact.
How to keep a client happy
Keeping a client happy isn’t always easy. It’s about being upfront about any mistakes you make, and honest. Integrity is everything. Learning from your mistakes (and you will make them) is critical. Keeping in touch as I’ve mentioned earlier is important. Doing a simple all day session keeping in touch with existing clients, as often as you can, and showing you care about their custom is super important – and will make you stand out from other vendors. This is a great article with 6 ways to keep a client happy.
A simple client only newsletter filled with hints and tips (including your services) will help build repeat business. Alternatively maintaining an active blog, and making them a subscriber helps to educate them. If you teach, clients will ask questions. More often than not – questions equal business.
