A Quick Guide To Customer Service As a Freelance Writer
There are lots of articles on this site about writing. Occasionally I post about skills you need as a writer that don’t involve writing. This is one of them. Today I’m going to quickly go over some things that writers should probably do in order to deliver the best customer service experience they can.
It’s a boring topic, but customer service is a place where freelancers of all varieties go wrong. It’s also a place where getting it wrong can give you more headaches than they’re worth. Finally and above all, customer service is one of the places where, if you get it wrong, clients will not only be annoyed, but they’ll go out of their way to make your business fail.
That’s the why of it. The how of it is what’s coming up next.
Customer Service: Get the Basics Right
I rarely hire freelancers. I prefer to learn to do everything myself. I’ve written about why that is here, but a big reason I rarely hire freelancers is because of poor customer service. I’d like to think that I’m not a difficult customer, having been on the receiving end of a difficult client or two myself (not any of my current clients though, you’re all angels.)
Some freelancers I’ve not-hired have done the following:
- Never replied to an email. (Hint: If you’re trying to extract money from someone in exchange for a service and you actually want that money, then you need to make the effort.)
- Been rude in both real and perceivable ways.
- Give me a service/product that I didn’t ask for.
- Demanded more money after the agreement.
If this is you, then you need to get your act together. The lined article above proves I’m well aware of difficult clients. If you’re a freelancer, then you have to deal with them if you want to see your bank balance numbers go up. If you’re dealing with a difficult customer, then it’s fine to get irritated. Do not show that though.
If you’re dealing with a pleasant customer, there’s no excuse for being rude. You might feel grumpy that you’re working in an evening, or you might not like your job, but you must say please, thank you and sorry if you get things wrong.
These are basic things. You need to get them right. If you can’t, then your customer service will bring your business down.
Automate/Time Save Wherever You Can: You Don’t Get Paid For Customer Service
Whilst we want to provide the best experience possible for our clients, something to bear in mind is that customer service is not a fee-earning service. That means you want to spend as little time as possible on it.
If you’ve ever been on-hold with a call centre for an ungodly amount of time (hello HMRC) then you’ll know exactly how not to do this. You need to put care and attention into the details which customers care about.
What can you do? Here’s a list:
- Have stock contracts, pitches and follow-up emails which can be slightly customised for each client.
- Have a big document/spreadsheet full of all transactions, dates and the like for easy viewing.
- Have a pen and paper ready (better yet record if legal) phone calls.
- Automate your billing and delivery process as much as possible.
The extent to which you’ll be able to automate/use template stuff will depend on your job and client. For instance, if you’re doing a job for which you’ll get paid five figures, then you’ll need to have a pretty hands-on approach to customer service, and it’s probably worth it to spend a day writing up some documentation to give to your client. On the other hand, with Fiverr you can pretty much automate absolutely everything in order to cut down time and up profitability.
That Said, Never Do A Bad Job
Your freelance career depends on your reputation. Keep it alive and positive at all costs. If you have to do a little more, then do a little more. Don’t automate to cut corners on the service you provide. I do a lot of the above things as well as even more things that I won’t mention (competitive advantage and all that.) The key thing is a client will never know. That’s how your customer service needs to be.
Final Thoughts
Customer service is easy. However, if you don’t think about it carefully and work out what you have to do, want to do and don’t need to do, then you’re going to waste time and cut into your profitability. You’ll probably also make the wrong decisions.
Take the time to think about your process, and then work your customer service into self-contained processes which you can automate and perfect. You’ll gain a lot from doing this.