Why a high level of service is good

In a broad sense, a high level of service is when the client’s problems are solved before they arise. For example, in a hotel room, a client took a shower, and a fresh towel is already waiting for him on the dryer; returned to the room from a walk, and it was already cleaned; I went down to the foyer and breakfast was already on the table.

In my case, the service mainly consists of negotiations, demonstrations and approvals, so this formulation is more suitable for me: “A high level of service is when the client receives answers to questions before he asks them.” He is always aware of what is happening in the project, what the next step will be, at what point this step will happen and, finally, when it will all end.

If I'm immersed in work, and the client suddenly appears with questions like “How is the project going?”, “When will you send the documents?”, “Can I get a link to the prototype so I can familiarize myself with it in a calm environment?” and so on - it means something is wrong with my level of service. Uncertainty is the worst enemy of contentment.

If the customer is aware of everything, then he feels comfortable and calm. There is a feeling that the situation is being led and controlled by a professional, and you can relax.

How did I come to this? The natural way. At the beginning of my career I didn’t even think about such questions. I was worried about more understandable things. How to attract new clients? How can I get them to contact me again? How to increase the cost of services? One of these questions was: “How to do work faster without losing quality?” In an attempt to answer this, I constantly worked on the ergonomics of service delivery processes. I increased the already high printing speed so as not to waste time typing in documents and correspondence. I started making all my artifacts so that they could be easily edited after receiving feedback, and then reused in new projects. I was constantly learning skills related to the profession, especially if the lack of them forced me to slow down and turn to the Internet for missing information.

After some time, I noticed that I had seriously accelerated my work and at the same time I was losing a lot of time at the stages of sales and intermediate negotiations. For example: I received a client’s contact, wrote to him in the messenger and asked him to send some description of the task, and then sat and waited until he gathered his strength, described the task in his own words and sent it in a reply message or by email.

This could take several days, or even weeks. To make the task easier for the potential client and not waste time, I prepared a brief that needed to be filled out and sent to me. It contained standard questions, the answers to which helped to understand the essence of the project. Clients filled out briefs easier and faster, but not much, because they had to set aside time for this “homework” (and many of us, since school, don’t really like homework), understand the brief, and type it. This is an unpleasant task that is difficult to take on. I myself have been convinced of this many times when I acted as a client. We should not forget about situations when briefs are filled out carelessly and not completely. Such documents are of little use.

Then I decided that the fastest way would be to fill out the brief myself - according to the client. Moreover, I learned to type quickly, and for me it was not difficult. Therefore, at the first meeting, I began to send messages to potential clients in which I offered to call on Skype (Zoom, Telegram, Google Meetings, etc.; whichever suited them best), get to know each other and discuss the task. And I immediately saved money - lo and behold! — from a couple of days to a couple of weeks with each customer!

I didn’t mind spending an extra hour on a personal conversation, because the service itself is not cheap, and I warned potential clients in advance about the minimum amount of work. Customers without suitable budgets immediately “fell off”, saving both their and my time. And the rest were only glad to finally communicate with a person who does not force them to fill out some strange documents and come with chewed-up technical specifications - but, on the contrary, helps them formulate and formalize this task.

But here, too, time was lost. In my messages I offered to communicate by voice and waited to see what the potential client would answer. I expected him to suggest a convenient day, a time to talk, and perhaps a method of communication. However, no one offered anything and asked questions: “What day?”, “What time?”, “How long will it take?”, “What program will you need to use to communicate?” and so on. Replies in correspondence took some time, and so I began to slowly integrate them into my initial message.

I no longer just offered to communicate by voice, but informed them of the preliminary date, time and regulations. I warned about how long such a conversation could take; that it is better to call from a computer with a headset, and not from a mobile phone, and so on. At the end, I didn’t forget to ask what the potential client thought about my proposal. So that he does not have the desire to ignore my message, but there is a need to confirm the conditions or adjust them. In general, everything that you read about in the chapter “How to write to clients so that they don’t “fall off”” is actually the result of my endless attempts to speed up the interaction process so that there is more time for work and new contacts.

And one day, for the first time, I received feedback from one of my clients that he liked my high level of service. “So that’s what it is!” — I thought and looked at my work processes from a different angle. I saw that I intuitively tried to save working time wherever possible. I sent documents in advance and used the services of urgent courier delivery services, managed the calendar of meetings, organized the work so that feedback and edits would come from the first day and throughout the entire period, and not on the last day (so that we, together with the client, would move towards the intended goal in short iterations, and would not have to redo everything after I showed the result at the end of the project).

This entire book is filled with such moments. And it turns out that a high level of service in my case is not an end in itself, but a consequence of the desire to speed up work, reduce the risk of customer dissatisfaction to zero and increase the likelihood of repeat requests.

I would like to give as an example the features of my work that illustrate the high level of service:

• I organize the first negotiations myself: I offer time, regulations, a method of communication, I tell in advance what exactly is to be discussed and what to prepare for;
• I don’t torment clients with filling out briefs, preparing technical specifications and other “homework”;
• I draw clients’ attention in advance to the “delicate” points in the contract (these are the points that lawyers of previous clients paid attention to for some reason);
• I warn you in advance about any changes in the work process and postponements;
• During the demonstrations, I also show layout options that I made but rejected. I talk about the “behind the scenes” work so that clients don’t think that I did almost nothing and got a good result the first time;
• After completing the work, without unnecessary reminders, I send all the necessary sources to the client’s email;
• Immediately after the project is completed, I prepare closing acts. Any documentation not sent electronically is accompanied by a self-addressed envelope;
• I work with electronic document management systems with those companies that have it;
• I regularly ask former clients how they are doing, and I offer to help at the next stages of project development.

Let's summarize.Why improve the level of service?To stand out among colleagues (my observations show that on average the level of service in freelancing is quite sad), so that clients want to come back again and again, in order to successfully move from working with professional clients to working with non-professional ones (they have more money, and the market is not “overheated”). When ordering complex services, to understand how good a specialist is, you need to have a good understanding of what he offers us. But everyone can appreciate the level of service from the very first minutes of communication.

How to improve the level of service?Get big shots and collect client questions. For example, if people often ask “How is work going?” - it means I didn’t explain well enough what was happening and what the next step was. With a high level of service, the customer always knows the answer to this question.
Is a high level of service always necessary?Perhaps there are exceptions. The main thing is not to improve the service to your own detriment. I had a case when I made an appointment to replace a car windshield. I arrived at the other end of the city and found out on the spot that they do not accept payments by bank cards. Moreover, the reason was not that the specialists were trying to put money past the cash register or save on acquiring. The workshop was located in the basement of a business center, where there was no mobile communications, which is why the terminals did not work. If they had demonstrated a high level of service and communicated this in advance, they would simply have lost the client. And so, when I already arrived, I had nowhere to go. So they had to walk a kilometer to the nearest ATM to get some cash while they did the work. But, of course, this is an ambiguous example. After all, clients love it when a performer is respectful of their time and effort, and that’s why I won’t contact those guys again and won’t recommend them. And it remains a mystery to me why cellular signal amplifiers are not installed there, if it is impossible to install wired Internet in the basement...