Freelance Friday

Service and Reliability

There are four defining characteristics to a business; quality, price, reliability and service.
As in any other business, service sets you apart, keeps the client and relationship happy and justifies your cost. In freelancing service takes four main forms:

General Relations
This means the quality of your face to face relations, your phone conversations and your emails. It means being approachable, affable and easy to get along with. It means taking an interest in your client and their business above and beyond the job. It means being someone they want to work with.

Accessibility
Clients want to be able to get in touch with you. There is nothing worse than not being able to get a hold of a person in a critical moment, so make sure you are available by phone, email, internet chat and possibly even at your business address. Different types of work will entail different levels of accessibility in terms of after hours, but all freelancers should be available during business hours at the minimum.

Occasionally Over-delivering
Over-delivering on a job means going the extra mile for a client, it might be an extra feature in a software job, an extra application of their graphic identity, or some written copy they needed but didn’t ask for. It is work that when delivered makes the client feel they are being taken care of and that you have their best interests at heart.

Saving the Day
In freelancing you will often get the chance to save the day for your client and I recommend taking advantage of these opportunities when they come up. It occurs often for a freelancer because your client will often have their own client that they are working for, and all clients have deadlines. So when your client comes to you with an emergency deadline that no-one else can handle, it looks great if you can produce results at that critical moment.

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