Taking the plunge into the world of freelancing is daunting. You haven’t got a sales and marketing team to bring in all of your customers for you, it’s all up to you. Finding your first customers is one thing, but getting them to come back time and time again is the key to creating a customer base that brings you regular work. This is a big enough struggle for a business, but for freelancers, it’s even harder. Most freelancers struggle to get repeat customers and they don’t understand why. You’re probably in the same boat. These are the common mistakes that stop freelancers from securing repeat customers.
Missing Deadlines
This is a big one. Everybody knows that it’s important to meet your deadlines, but some freelancers seem to think that they’re a little flexible. They think that being freelance means that they can be flexible with their work, and it does, but when it comes to deadlines you need to meet them on time as you would if you were working for a company. Whatever it is that you’re doing for them, you aren’t the only person that offers that service. It’s also fairly easy to find freelancers online so it only takes one missed deadline before they’ll go somewhere else.
Poor Customer Service
One of the biggest challenges that new freelancers face is having to deal with areas of the business that they wouldn’t normally have to. For example, if you have been working as a graphic designer for a business, you just deal with the project itself and other departments handle everything else. Now that you’re a freelancer, everything falls to you. That means you’re going to be handling areas that you have no experience in whatsoever. The most important of these is customer service. Regardless of how good the work is, customers won’t come back if they don’t have a pleasant experience with you. If your skills are lacking, go on a customer service training course to learn the skills that you need. Good customer service is about more than just being nice on the phone. There are all sorts of different skills that you need to learn to make sure that the customer experience is perfect from start to finish.
Doing The Bare Minimum
If a customer commissions you to do some work, and you give them exactly what they asked for, they’re going to be happy with it. They might come back. But they aren’t going to be shouting from the rooftops about how great your work is. The best way to make yourself stand out in their mind is to go above and beyond what they asked. For example, if you’re designing a website for somebody they’ll work with you to create a design. However, you’ll really impress them if you make a few different versions that they can choose from. They might like one of them better than their original design and they will be far happier with the result.
These three mistakes could mean the difference between success and failure for freelancers, so make sure to avoid them at all costs.
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