The Fine Art Of Freelance Customer Service — Avoid The Dreaded Crash And Burn

Customer service is perhaps the most overlooked skill that a freelance writer worth his salt must possess. Without understanding what your client wants, you cannot deliver the goods no matter how creative and breathtaking your writing may be.

Friendly working relationships make freelancing more fun for both you and your clients, and makes the whole process glide smoothly and effortlessly.

The key to good customer service is to get the information you need from your clients without them feeling like they’ve been interrogated by the Gestapo. Here is a quick list of information that will help you produce better content:

• The purpose of the articles (To sell an affiliate product? To drive traffic?)
• Where the articles will be posted (A blog? An article directory?)
• The style of writing required (Informative? Humorous? Cocky?)
• The target audience (Where have they come from? Where will they go? Who are they?)

In an ideal world, your clients would provide all this information for you, but back in the real world they rarely do. Most clients are paying you to do the work so they can spend their time on more profitable activities. They don’t want to waste their time with handholding, telling you how to do your job. So it is important to gain the most vital information, and then use your noggin to work out the rest for yourself.

With these things in mind, the first question to ask is this: Do you have some examples of the type of article you want? If your client provides a few examples, you sometimes can deduce all the information you need from them alone. Sometimes you will also need to ask what the purpose of the articles is. These two questions will always provide enough information to get started.

A great way to ensure that you’re producing articles that your clients will love is to immediately show them the first article you’ve written in order to get feedback. If you are at all unsure about what they want, this gives you an opportunity to sneak in a couple of extra questions under the radar.

Finally, upon the completion of the project, I inform my clients to let me know if they are in any way unhappy . This is makes sure that the project results in a win-win for both sides. Your client gets what they want, and you get a testimonial, some good feedback, and a possible long-term client.

Customer service can be daunting to a new freelance writer, but by simply following the advice in this article you’ll already be better than the vast majority of freelancers out there. Put your client first and look at things from their perspective. Understand their desires and fears and motivations, and then you’ll never have to seek work again — work will come to you.