Something interesting happened last Thursday.
Out of the Blue, I got an email from a very old client of mine. Last time I worked for him was in...early 2011 I think. ~12 years back, as a Freelancer.
I worked on 4-5 projects for him that time. Some even outside that Freelancer website to save on commissions 😉.
I was not in contact with him since then.
I exchanged a few emails with him over last couple of days to discuss this project.
He wants my team to relaunch his website with all the latest Wordpress and DirectoryPress, put better SEO and integrate latest content feeds.
I was obviously not expecting his email because I was no longer active on freelancer.com website.
But the guy remembered me, went through the hassles of finding our previous conversations, found my website and contacted me via the contact email.
Why did the guy take that much effort to reach me?
He could have easily seen that I am no longer active on any freelancing website and simply hired a new contractor to complete his project.
I gave it a more thought and analyzed what and how I was different that time.
You know what was it?
Customer Support
In those early days of my freelancing career, I had made a habit of sending daily emails. I called it Daily Progress Report (DPR). It sounded cool.
Each EOD, I crafted an email, telling the client about what I did on that day, what was the status of their project and whether we were on schedule or not.
If I deployed on that day, I would also send them a link to my staging server site, where they could see their brainchild growing up in front of their eyes.
The emails were usually very short, not more than 2-3 lines, but had big impact on the clients' behavior.
Their perception towards me as a noob and towards freelancing in general changed.
They would trust me more than others. Of course I was also delivering on promised deadlines, better than their expectations.
In a world of all negative feedbacks about freelancers and how they took money without delivering to their promises, my feedbacks were all good positive.
I had more than 50% repeat hire rate. That means whenever I did one project, I got many more from the same client.
The reason?
I put customer support as #1 priority.
Then and Now.
Every time a customer contacts, I make sure that within 24 hours they should get a reply.
Every day, I have conversations (via chat, calls or emails) with all my active clients.
Have you noticed the tag line in Amazon's communication emails?
'Earth's most customer centric company'
That's a bold claim and they totally live up to it.
Their superb customer support is in fact their very USP that separates them from the crowd.
Give your customers the support that you expect as a customer.
If your customer support agreement says you will answer in 48 hours, try to do that in 24 hours. If it says 24 hours, try to do that in 12 hours.
Surprise your customers.
Imagine a customer in a different time zone creates a support ticket during their late evening hours and by the time they wake up in the morning, they get a notification that their ticket is being looked upon or has been resolved.
Congratulations. You just added smile to their face the first thing in the morning.
You just increased your trustworthiness and your business.
Next time, you get a customer ticket
- reply them that you received the ticket
- keep them in the loop every 6 hours and notify them about the status
- ask them if the issue was resolved to their satisfaction
- provide a simple escalation mechanism if the resolution was not up to mark
Follow these simple steps and you'll definitely notice an improvement in your customer retention.
These satisfied customers will then become your free affiliates.
Free marketing you see.
That's why the subject line says "Customer Support is your Unique Selling Proposition"
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Love your family and spend time with them. Take them out for dinner or a movie.
They deserve your time more than anybody else.
Till next time 🙋🏻♂️
Anshul
