Dissatisfied clients

It’s interesting that we recognise that dissatisfied clients are not good for business. We should really have some form of complaints procedure: but do we? How do you tap into your clients’ real opinions? Let’s hope you don’t wait until they just leave or not renew their contract with you.

It’s hard winning new business and worse if your reputation has been sullied with poor reviews on the increasing number of review sites aimed at specific service sectors including online businesses. See Choosing the right web design agency for your business, Mash Web Design, Adam Collins (21.6.2014).

Yes, some complaints are unjustified. The clients have not fully understood the nuances of what was offered and the consequences for their decisions despite you explaining. But, it is so important that you educate them until you are confident they fully understand the compromises they have made and the results to be expected. Very often the compromises are cost-driven of course.

However, we have to accept that there are ‘questionable’ businesses out there that don’t appear to care for long-term relationships with their clients and/or don’t provide for the changing and maturing needs of clients. The closest I got to finding specific reasons for clients’ dissatisfaction was the recognition of why new clients appeared when they had not been happy with their previous digital partner. So, companies like WOM web solutions are upfront and use reasons they have found for dissatisfaction to their advantage. They say,

... unlike typical web companies, we don’t move around or change our name to avoid the fallout from dissatisfied clients.

Other companies have won new business as a result of clients’ needs maturing, so that if they initially got a cheap quick solution for their presence online by using templates, then they progress from that position to want more. Brass Tacks Web Design highlights this dissatisfaction as a reason to move to them.

"...these templates can be limited in flexibility and originality and some people find themselves outgrowing the stock solution quite quickly. We also find that some clients coming from these providers are unhappy with the service they receive.

If you feel that your clients will tell you how they are feeling, think again. Stephen Attree from Myers, Listers, Price solicitors, in Unhappy Clients Don’t Complain … (5.6.2014), quotes stats from a survey that covered accountants, bankers and solicitors. Well, if people don’t complain about them, will they about iMedia companies? Hard to say. But Stephen is clear that the clients who don’t complain take their business elsewhere.

Naturally, there is the other side where you are the aggrieved party. If you are a freelancer have you felt ripped off? Have your clients refused to pay properly? Maria Brophy attacks this practice including reference to freelance web designers in How to Never Get Ripped Off AGAIN – for Freelancers (undated), She gives some sound tips for you if this is happening.

Business is not straightforward. There can and will be gripes on both sides. But, it is true that if you know about the gripes you can begin to address them in a variety of ways before you lose business over them. Listen to your people and listen to your clients.

Staff or non-staff: that is the question

The balance between staff and freelancers keeps bubbling to the surface. Many moons ago we discussed freelance culture and the IR35 rules that related to people working as if they were employees of an organisation but through their own service company. MPs on the UK public accounts committee have recently complained about how many people in public service are paid through service companies but this good analysis on the BBC web site points out that it's usually the contracting company who benefit rather than the contractor. And it doesn't even go into the extra accounting costs of running a company!

The question of whether using freelancers is inherently good for business is an interesting one and brings us to another use of our term iProfessional ... as follows ...

The IPro Index is a landmark research study conducted by Monash University and sponsored by Entity Solutions about the contract workforce in Australia.

In this case the I stands for Independent rather than Interactive and the basic message is For instant productivity, engage a white collar contractor, as Entity explain on their blog. The study is wider than information technology but is definitely worth a read. You'll have to register for an email link.

Just what constitutes a 'freelancer' can be unusual as well. The most unusual I've come across is to break a software task into components that are run as competitions: code crowd-sourcing. This is the basis of Topcoder and there are currently over 430 thousand members of the community working on projects for people like DARPA, NASA and Intel.

So now not only can your processing and storage be in the cloud ... your workers can be as well!

The Freelance culture - what it can mean for your project

How many of us employ freelancers on our projects? In iMedia it seems to be quite the norm to supplement the team with extra skills from the freelance pool. We should admit that we can’t work without them. But with their non-conformist, free-spirit culture do they fit in with a team ethos?

iMedia development needs a mix of skills, creativity, technical know-how, hard-graft, attention to detail, time sensitivity, business nous, market awareness and project management. It’s a project development activity that cries out for a team of people. Quite often the client wants something that makes a difference whether in look or feel, and a team that has gelled through working together can operate more efficiently but may lack the spark of difference. This is what a new member may bring. Will the existing team squash or embrace the newbie freelancer? Will you? Will your management?

The interface between employees and freelancers has not been the focus of much attention when it should be. It poses risks and benefits that need managing sensitively.

The good news is that iMedia freelancers along with general creative freelancers have a pool of resources to help them. They have become more professional, tap into one another and listen to advice from more experienced freelancers. It is not the isolated black art it used to be and we can’t relate to it like that any more. Perhaps it’s time to reappraise it. Take a look at the analysis from an experienced freelancer, Jacques van Heerden, who explodes 5 myths in 5 freelance myths busted from the start. Do any of these myths reflect your attitude/ your company’s culture?

To understand freelancers better, why not take a look at how they need to relate to contracts that you may offer them. Often companies just have standard tweaked contracts for freelancers and it can cause a lot of trouble when they query them. But they do so with very good reason and we need to employ them so we should do it right, shouldn’t we? Hopefully you have recourse to legal advice and after reading 10 things to be wary of when signing a consultancy contract, by James May, from the interesting FreelanceUK site, you’ll be able to read your own company freelance contracts with a bit more appreciation.

The 10 points here relate to the IR35 tax regulations where if freelancers are not seen as sufficiently independent in the revenue’s eyes, they will be treated as employees when it comes to tax and national insurance. This could be detrimental to the contractor but it can also have knock-on effects for the company who hires the freelancer, and these can be applied retrospectively. Remember this only relates to IR35 and the ‘employment’ position but of course there are other issues that need to be addressed in a freelance contract, such as intellectual property and liability.