Ask HN: What is something you do for clients that consistently blows them away? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: What is something you do for clients that consistently blows them away?

#261

Post by rgacote » Mon, Dec 12, 2016, 10:49 PM UTC

michaelmior wrote: post #109

raverbashing wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would you export it to xls? ActiveX Excel controller ("in my time this was called COM", etc)? Open source library?

tablib[0] is one option for Python. There are quite a few libraries that handle export. Excel files (and other Office) file formats are just zip files containing XML. For a while now, this has been an open standard[1]. [0] https://github.com/kennethreitz/tablib [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_Open_XML

I've found the Python pyexcel library to be the most flexible option to read/write Excel files. https://pypi.python.org/pypi/pyexcel/0.0.9

Re: Ask HN: What is something you do for clients that consistently blows them away?

#262

Post by rgbrgb » Mon, Dec 12, 2016, 11:14 PM UTC

On our real estate listing / brokerage site, we have a "GET MORE INFO" button on every property. When a user hits that they'll get an automated response with a title report, but then our agents will follow up the same day with a short note about the property and any additional info we can find. The human follow up tends to be a magic moment and if our agents are able to provide some juicy info, the customer usually sticks with us for their purchase.

Re: Ask HN: What is something you do for clients that consistently blows them away?

#263

Post by jedberg » Tue, Dec 13, 2016, 12:09 AM UTC

khebbie wrote: post #152

jedberg wrote: post #34

Use CloudFormation to do anything.

Hey, you should check out Terraform ( I am not affiliated, but a happy customer)

I have, it's great. Both are things that customers find amazing. :)

Re: Ask HN: What is something you do for clients that consistently blows them away?

#264

Post by 3minus1 » Tue, Dec 13, 2016, 12:58 AM UTC

sauronlord wrote: post #135

3minus1 wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So disingenuously humor the client for a day or two before shooting their idea. Honestly, if I was your client and this happened a few times, I would start to wonder why you lack the expertise to immediately know ideas won't work.

The client is not talking for the sake of talking. They are expressing a desire, a need or a want Almost always you can dig down to their motivation and get a better idea of what they are _really_ after, even if the clients proposed "solution" is technically impossible. Your tone says something about your situation.

I'm not sure if you understood me. I don't think it's a good idea humor your clients. In fact, I think if could hurt you if they ever get wise to you bullshit.

Re: Ask HN: What is something you do for clients that consistently blows them away?

#265

Post by mooreds » Tue, Dec 13, 2016, 1:22 AM UTC

gkoberger wrote: post #43

When I did freelancing, I charged a bit more than I felt I should... but went above and beyond. My hourly rate may have been high, but I spent many "non-billable hours" making sure everything worked great and any changes (their fault or mine) were accounted for. I did a few jobs where someone else controlled the billing, and kept us on a tight schedule. Every hour was billed. We were "fired" (AKA contract not renewed…

The best freelancers sell solutions to pain, not hours.

Worth remembering.

Re: Ask HN: What is something you do for clients that consistently blows them away?

#266

Post by mattbgates » Tue, Dec 13, 2016, 1:25 AM UTC

I am the web developer/web designer that usually picks up where other web designers left off or "disappeared". They usually leave without a trace or they leave their client with a broken website. I also take them from being charged a fortune down to being charged a much fairer price. I know I could probably continue to charge them a fortune, but I just don't do that to people. I tend to go after people who are on a "shoe string" budget. I mean.. I charge them enough that I'm being paid for my time, but I am willing to work with their budgets.

I also offer something that I find most web people don't: I offer them good customer service. I answer my emails within 24 hours and I pick up my phone usually when they call or I get back to them asap. I try to give them a reasonable price and I expect payment upon delivery of my invoice.

I have just a few clients, but I've never had issues. And most of the time that is what my clients have confirmed that I have offered that no one else offers: customer service. It's just being extremely supportive. They want to know that someone is there when there is a problem. There is nothing worse than the feeling of running a business.. and knowing that you are screwed or worse -- you have to pay someone you don't know a fortune in an emergency situation.

Re: Ask HN: What is something you do for clients that consistently blows them away?

#267

Post by seanlinehan » Tue, Dec 13, 2016, 3:42 AM UTC

ohstopitu wrote: post #162

seanlinehan wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on the situation. Our rates have expiration dates attached to them, so if the price went up before our negotiated rate expired, we will eat it. If the rates expired, we leave it to the judgment of their account manager on what to do.

just out of curiosity - the value that your customers see...is it actual cost + your fee? (hence you can collect the fee even if the actual cost reduces?)

Yeah, classic brokerage biz model. We contract in bulk with asset owners and sell piecemeal.

Re: Ask HN: What is something you do for clients that consistently blows them away?

#268

Post by ankurdhama » Tue, Dec 13, 2016, 4:07 AM UTC

Ask them the questions (about the project/problem) that they never asked themselves.

Re: Ask HN: What is something you do for clients that consistently blows them away?

#269

Post by Fortative » Tue, Dec 13, 2016, 4:30 AM UTC

swalsh wrote: post #176

Zyst wrote: post #48

Most of these seem to be very on the side of "I'm a company", so as a sole developer what I like to do for clients is implementing sockets into their apps. Adding sockets for, say, the 3 newest logs they get in real time. Or if they have anything that maps to a graph/app-overview just make sure that will always update in real time. It's not a huge time investment for me. Customers usually never request it specificall…

I'm thinking about starting a consulting company next year. I've been in an engineering role for over 10 years, but I really want to move into a role where I'm not selling my time in exchange for code, but rather selling the value my code creates. I'm curious how you got your first few "gigs". What should the sales process actually look like? Did you cold call, or did you have enough established relationships first?…

The first gig came to me. The second was a result of the first. And it goes on from there. If you network then someone will approach you to help them with some code. Do a great job and the second will start. After you do a few, then worry about sales and marketing.

Re: Ask HN: What is something you do for clients that consistently blows them away?

#270

Post by rgzn » Tue, Dec 13, 2016, 6:21 AM UTC

pknerd wrote: post #96

I am a developer and usually writes web scrapers or automation tools most of the time beside typical web development. A couple of things I did and worked for me. - I offer them more than what they expect. At times scraping additional info which I think is useful but they did not realize I extract that too. Sometimes they ask for the script or data, one of them and I just offer them both and they appreciate it lot. Th…

How did you get into doing scraping contracts? I often write web automation scripts and scrapers for gathering research data, but have never figured out a way to get contact work.