How do you keep your clients happy?

[Herr Berg]

This question is directed more towards the independant contractors here but I hope anyone who has an opinion will comment.

Do you have any customer rention practices that seem to work well? Aside from getting the work done on time and on budget, do you do anything extra to keep your clients feeling good about you? Things like bringing Krispy Kreme's to project meetings, handing out little trinkets with your contact info on it or whatever.

I have a client that is a huge source of my income and I am starting to think they are researching other contractors to compare my fees and service. I charge less than most and have never missed a deadline but sometimes that's not enough.

Any opinions or tips on what works?

[starrwriter]

I don't offer anything special aside from doing the best job I'm capable of with what I'm given to work with. If a client isn't satisfied, he can find another designer and there's no hard feelings on my part.

[Vladdy]

"Do not promise more than you can deliver, and deliver what you promised" - usually works for me...

[Compguy Pete]

Man this could be a huge reply. However I'll keep it short.

Service
Service
Service

I'm not huge into buying promo's to give out... Mainly based on cost, however I have ordered pens in the past. People love pens, which I do give someone if they notice it while were talking. Mainly I leave them at banks and other places people use pens. A pen generally goes to 10-12 people in it's lifetime if it's a good quality pen.

If you have a good price and you know your client is happy with your work... then I wouldn't worry so much over what they do. It's the nature of a business to shop around. If they fail to see the value in quality on-timework then let them go.

Granted I know what it's like to have the loss of a large client (anchor client). How well do you know your contact at this business?

It may be wise to make a survey on your site and ask them to take it. Call it a customer satisfaction survey; make it open on your site so it looks on the up and up. Sure you may want to know what others think but your main goal is to find out what they think. Leave space on the form for them to leave comments and suggestions.

Rather than emailing them that you have this on your site, call or stop in the office and invite them personally to take the survey. Tell them it’s about 15 questions and it should only take 5minutes to fill out. Then keep it that short.

You may find things out about your clients’ needs you never knew they had.

You could add questions on if they would like you to offer more services like hardware sales or pc service.

Just make sure you do not ask for a name on the form and when you talk to people about the survey tell them you will share the results of the survey on your site or you can give them a copy after words.