Keeping up with clients?What comes to your mind when I ask you this question?
Keeping up with the skills your clients require?Keeping up with the specific requirements clients have?
Well, this is about updating your clients frequently.Yes, I’m talking here about freelancers. In this article, I’ll show you why constantly communicating with clients is very important for your success.
Now, I freelance mainly on Fiverr so here’s a typical scenario of a conversation with a client.
- A buyer messages me directly inquiring about whether I could improve their site’s security.
- I’ll ask the requirements, state a budget, sometimes negotiations happen and then I’d send a custom offer.
- The buyer orders the gig and I start.
But what happens after that? That is where my friend, many freelancers and even buyers may get unresponsive.
What do I mean by this?
Not keeping the client updated with the progress on the job or the buyer not responding to the seller’s queries.
For example, someone hired me to set up a payment integration and a live chat integration on their site.After I started and completed the first phase of integrating the live chat feature, I immediately messaged the client asking for feedback and telling him that one part of his job had been done.
Notice the average response time, ‘1 Hour’. This is how it should be.
How will this help you?
- Its simple human logic, the more supportive and assuring you are, the more comfortable will your client be, they’ll know what’s going on behind the scenes instead of waiting for 3 days for you to deliver and then realizing that you made a big blunder.
- This approach doesn’t just apply to freelancers, it applies to people of every profession whether the seller or buyer, remaining out of touch can also come across as rude or a lack of dedication to a certain task.
- This will significantly speed up your progress.Have a confusion? Communicate with each other and solve it instead of being disappointed when your buyer requests a revision at the end when you thought you were done.
Here’s an example of a few reviews from my Fiverr Profile:
Notice the words, ‘super fast delivery.’ They were entirely possible by the fact that I kept asking the client for clarification and requested feedback to avoid wasting both our time at the end and it worked.That’s some proof here.
So the next time you’re doing a project, frequently update the client with the progress unless it’s a very short job.It’ll not only help you complete the project with clarities, it’ll also bag you some great reviews.
Wouldn’t I come off as pushy?
You might have the fear of being too pushy but honestly, you can just avoid that by the art of using your words effectively.
Here’s an example:
Hi there, I just realised that the login credentials you provided were incorrect,can you send me the correct ones please?
I received no reply from the client so here’s my response again after a couple of hours.
I’ll be waiting for your response since I can’t get started without the credentials.
Without sounding pushy, I have a moderate response which obviously seems to be in the client’s favor. Notice the “I can’t get started” part.The client immediately knows that the earlier he sends in the right information, the earlier his work is done.
So the point is, you can send 5 messages without being pushy but can also send 2 messages looking pushy, its all about how you craft your words.
