The tale of Sandra, Lars and communicating with clients

Let me tell you about two freelance web developers – Sandra and Lars – and how one had much happier customers than the other.

Sandra keeps almost every one of her clients for years. Lars has some trouble keeping his clients and always have to find new leads. One day Lars approached Sandra and asked: “What is your secret? Can you help me with keeping my clients?”

Sandra asked to sit by Lars for a couple of hours while he was working, and she studied him carefully.

The first e-mail question arrived early in the morning. It was a client that wanted an estimate. Lars was happy. “Perfect! I’ll get started right away. This is a huge opportunity for me!”. So he started working on the estimate.

Fifteen minutes later, another client called. Her website was down. Lars said it wasn’t his fault, and blamed the ISP – but he dropped the estimate work and fixed the problem right away. He did not call the customer back.

After another 15 minutes, Lars was already bored with the estimate. Another client e-mailed in and asked him to add Facebook login functionality to one of their web apps. “This sounds fun”, said Lars. He put the estimate to the side and started working on an intricate system of oauth tokens that would login the customer to the right page. Sandra was impressed by his coding skills. After only a couple of hours he had implemented the login system. He installed it on the server and smiled. “See - I’m that good. Why won’t my clients understand it?”

“Because you never communicate with them”, said Sandra. “Wait .. what? I talk to customers all day, said Lars. “There’s no end to the constant e-mails and support calls.”

“Yes, but let’s take the client asking for the estimate, for example”, said Sandra. “She does not even know that you have started on the estimate - does she?”

Lars thought about it. “No, you’re right”, he said.

“And how about the client with the website that was down? You did never call them back to say you had fix the problem.”

Lars looked perplexed. “But, isn’t it better that I fix the problem?”

“No, not if you never let the client know about it”, Sandra said. “And if you ever make a mistake so that the website did not go online the client will think that you are still working on the problem or never started at all.”

Lars was ashamed. He thought he did good all day.

“So … I guess I should have communicated about the login system too?” “Yes!”, Sandra cried. “You always need to let them know what is going on.”

She found a pencil and scribbled some letters on the back of a business card.

“This is basically how I run my business.”, said Sandra.

“When something new comes up, I like to plan it directly. If it is urgent - then I plan to start it right away unless I’m already doing something urgent. Then it will be the next thing on my list.”

Confirm - as soon as I have planned when to do it I always confirm that with the customer.

It can be as simple as: “Okay, you will have your estimate by the end of the week.” or “This will take me a couple of hours, I will hopefully be done today.” Most of the time I add som extra padding to make sure I do not promise too much.

Then I get to work.

And then it is time to update your client about the task or project.

“Right”, said Lars. “You call them back when you’re ready?”

“Yes,”, Sandra responded. “But that is not all. I am also communicating with them if I get delayed. And when everything goes according to schedule for longer projects.”

“I see how this works”, said Lars. “But won’t the client be angry with you if you tell them you’re delayed?”

Sandra looked at him: “Not nearly as angry as they will be if I get delayed AND they won’t hear from me.”

Lars smiled. He never thought about clients this way.

“Maybe I could even tell them that I have too much to do at times?”, he said. It sounds like some clients can be reasonable after all. “Sure. And you know who to call if you need help with your projects”, Sandra replied with a smile.

And then they freelanced happily ever after.