The Art of Exceeding Client Expectations: Why customer service should matter to freelancers

As a freelance translator or interpreter, you’ve dedicated years to learning your craft, building a portfolio and mastering certifications. You may want to believe that your specialized knowledge and experience will speak for (and sell) itself, but succeeding as a freelancer takes a whole host of other skills. A freelancer has to be his or her own sales and marketing team, accountant, office administrator and maybe even web designer. Among all the roles that freelancers play, it is easy to see why the importance of customer service is sometimes overlooked. It should not be that way, though. Effort put into customer service saves double that effort in seeking and securing clients.

What is customer service? It is about more than fielding complaints and practicing good email etiquette. Customer service is the art of exceeding customer expectations. Success as a freelance translator or interpreter relies on being able to build strong relationships with clients. You are not just a representative of a business, you are your business. Customer service based on communication, responsiveness, and integrity will help secure new clients, build long term relationships with existing clients, and will contribute to a positive reputation.

A freelance professional who communicates clearly is easy to hire and easy to work with. You are the expert, so give potential and new clients the information they need to understand your services and value as an expert. Good communication builds rapport and connection, setting you apart from the competition. You are not just trying to secure a contract. You are establishing a relationship that may lead to repeat contracts and recommendations. Good communication is also essential to ensuring that you deliver the service that the client expects, or better yet, a service that fulfills their needs and priorities so well that it exceeds their expectations. Ultimately, this is what generates repeat business and good word-of-mouth.

Clients will also return to a freelancer who demonstrates that they are responsive to the client’s needs. This may mean being flexible to changes of direction and being open to unique requests. It also means being able to resolve problems and rectify mistakes with a positive, solution oriented attitude. Flexibility and responsiveness to requests will garner new clients. To existing clients, it will demonstrate your ongoing dedication to their satisfaction. Being able to effectively respond to problems and mistakes, which will inevitably occur, demonstrates reliability and integrity.

Like most relationships, the most successful, long term client-freelancer relationships are based on trust. Integrity is fundamental to establishing and maintaining this trust. This is can be as simple as delivering work by agreed upon deadlines, or as challenging as resolving conflicts or rectifying mistakes in a fair and constructive manner. Becoming a trusted name in your industry will also generate new business.

A strong portfolio and certifications are fundamental to establishing a career as a translator or interpreter. Customer service, however, is what will set a career as a freelancer into motion.  Prioritizing customer service from first contact with a potential client and throughout the entire project pays off in a positive professional reputation, long-term, repeat clients, and new business.

Important Tips for Working with Language Service Providers

As a new translator starting out or a seasoned professional who likes to keep things simple, it might be the case that you decide you want to work for a Language Service Provider (LSP) or translation agency rather than seeking out clients directly. Whatever your reasons for pursuing work with an LSP, there are some important tips that can make your time with them more productive and mutually successful.

Recently, ATIA held a webinar with the CEO of Alpha Translations Canada, Michele Hecken. Michele went through a ton of introductory tips for working with LSPs and we are picking out and adding to our favourites for all of you.

Deliver on what you promise to.

This might sound obvious but the snowball effect when working for LSPs is very real. The more solid work you produce, the more you will be offered. And the busier you will be. Note that LSPs sift through hundreds and hundreds of translation CVs regularly so your position there is always a bit tenuous, but one way to have job security is to be reliable for quality translations delivered on-tie, every time. As harsh as that sounds, this is the world of working for LSPs. They are usually producing work globally and generally have a very large translator database. Everyone has off-days but there is less opportunity to come back from a few of those when working for an LSP simply because of the size of these organizations and how in-demand they are by clients and professionals alike. Stay consistent and manage your time to deliver quality translations regularly.

Specialize!

This might seem counter-intuitive because you would think that the more types of translations you do would *translate* into more types of work offered, but this is generally not the case. The more you specialize in specific types of translations, the more work you are likely to build up in your area of expertise. You might even garner a reputation as the go-to translator for that specialization. Never be afraid to turn down translation work that you are not qualified to attend to – the LSP will likely respect your knowledge of your own boundaries and will appreciate that you don’t take on anything that is outside your areas of expertise, which could result in subpar translations.

Embrace the technological revolution!

Translations-by-hand are still often seen as the best method for accuracy but they may be more time-consuming than you or the LSP you work for would like. At ATIA, we know folks who recommend avoiding machine translations wherever possible. At the same time, there are some technological tools which make your work a lot easier – especially for everything but the translation itself! Use appropriate software for formatting, scheduling your work, storing your work, and invoicing at the end of the day. We have written about this previously, so be sure to check out the best online tools for professional translators.

Stay in your lane.

Knowing your place as a translator is important for keeping yourself sane and on-track. It isn’t your job to work on source texts so if you find errors, don’t edit them. Simply translate to the best of your ability the meaning of the text. You can introduce a translator’s note to draw attention to project manager about the original errors who can then advise the client.

Signs You’re Cut Out For Freelancing

If you have dabbled a bit in freelance work or are thinking about making it your career, there are some important points to consider when it comes to taking the plunge! While not all of these will be true for everyone and even if you don’t resonate with these, that shouldn’t deter you from trying out freelance work if you are inclined, the following list includes many of the characteristics freelancers commonly report as being important to do well in their work. So without further ado, here are the signs you might be cut out for freelance work:

You can focus.

This is a big one. Yes, some procrastination is inevitable and there are some folks who work best under pressure so procrastination can become a motivational and even inspiring tool to get quality work done. However, for most people, translation and writing work takes several drafts and time to percolate which means that leaving everything to the last minute or working on multiple projects simultaneously (thereby distracting you from all of them) means that your work can leave a lot to be desired. You have to be able to make lists of priorities and execute those items according to what is the most needed and most urgent. Spreading yourself too thin over a number of tasks or getting distracted by other things is a recipe for a mess!

You can be many different things to many different people.

Being a freelance translator does not mean that you will only be freelance translating. It also means that sometimes you are doing marketing work, networking and outreach, administrative assistant work, book-keeping, accounting and so forth. You have to be able to move between these positions fairly seamlessly and according to the contexts in which you find yourself.

You are willing to cultivate relationships.

The importance of being willing to cultivate long-term relationships with clients, businesses, organizations and groups that are relevant to your area of work cannot be underestimated. You don’t have to be a networking all-star but you do have to keep on top of community events you are invited to, social media interactions and the like. Frankly, this task is easier now than ever before because connection with others can be had at the click of a mouse.

You can conquer “impostor syndrome”. You believe in yourself and your work.

Being paralyzed by fear or perfectionism will only make your work harder and more stressful. Be open to constructive feedback and be sure to always check your work, but don’t become obsessed with every single detail. You should be able to produce polished work without having an emotional weighing of your self-worth tied to it. Remember you are a trained professional with skills and expertise to offer. If you don’t know something, learn it or admit it and move on!

You believe the rewards of freelance work outweigh the risk.

Freelancing is not without risks – particularly a sense of job security and perhaps a steady paycheque. But if you are willing to trade those things for all the benefits of being your own boss, being able to work from anywhere in the world, and choosing what work you put out into the world, you are unlikely to be disappointed. Plus if you have been making fairly decent money on the side for a while from freelancing, taking the plunge might not be so scary after all. Just imagine how much ore work you could get by focusing on what you do entirely.

You are willing to do *some* things for free.

This is a touchy subject but it is important to realize that there are plenty of things you will do to manage your business that you aren’t directly paid for. Unless you are making loads of cash, you are unlikely to be able to pull a salary from your profit to pay yourself for the management of the business beyond the actual freelance work itself. Returning emails, taking calls, arranging meetings and the like are all things that you can’t really invoice someone for. Depending on how you bill, whether by word or by hour, there is the chance that you can factor some of that overall time into how you do invoice though. It is important to measure how long you spend doing unpaid/non-invoiced work for your business because if you end up losing out of deals because you are spending so much time doing the nitty-gritty, it might be worth your while to subcontract some of that out to someone else.

You have healthy coping mechanisms for dealing with stress.

There is going to be a time when all things converge at once and you are going to feel like you have to stay up until 2am every night for over a week to get everything done. How you deal with this matters. One of the number one reasons that folks leave the freelancing world is that they are unable to cope with the unique stresses it brings: from accommodating difficult client requests to feeling like you are working around the clock, from feeling like you can never clock out to giving up any semblance of a weekend. Be good about setting time boundaries so your work doesn’t bleed into every aspect of your life including recreational and family time. Make sure you can recognize when things start to get too hair for you and you need to take a breather. Figure out ways that you can make things more manageable, and know when to approach clients for more time, if needed.

You know how to say “No.”

This is another big one…especially when you are first starting out. Who wants to turn down work? At the same time, we can’t all do everything. We have areas of specialization and work-life balance to consider, among other things. Your limits are really up to you. Spend some time thinking about what you are doing with your life and your goals for the year or five-year period. Is the work you are doing helping you to achieve those goals?

You work well solo from home.

Most freelancers work from home or in public spaces like coffeeshops or libraries. Some get to the point of being so busy that they are able to rent an office space to meet clients and complete their work at. For the rest of us, working well, solo, from home is crucial to our success. If it really bothers you to be alone all the time, consider going to a monthly meet-up of freelancers for coffee where you can share your experiences and network, or meet a fellow freelancer for a work session at a coffee shop – just make sure you don’t end up distracting each other too much!

You have developed organizational methods that work for you.

There are plenty of other signs that a career in freelancing could be for you but ultimately you are the best determiner of that fact. What works for one freelancer, doesn’t work for everyone and over time, you will develop the organizational methods that work best for you. Some freelancers work best with a paper wall calendar and to-do lists on sticky notes, others are digital all the way. Whatever keeps you on track and ensures that your work gets done on-time and well is what you should stick with!