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

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21–30 of 288 posts

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

#21
Here's an internal facing one: We send an automated greeting from the CEO as part of onboarding, but he actually sees and replies to every customer response, in both english and spanish, and forwards the more heartwarming ones on to the entire office.

It's pretty cool to get a handful of emails every day from actual customers who are very grateful for the work we do.

It also changed my opinion on the "canned CEO greeting". As someone who knows how those are built, they always struck me as annoying and disingenuous sales gimmicks, but our customers are significantly less tech savvy, and a huge number take the correspondence at face value and actually start a real conversation with the CEO.

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

#22

Lower their prices, without prompting. At Flexport we sell logistics services. The price of ocean freight is highly variable (less dynamic than, say, the stock market or airline seats, but still fluctuates a ton). We make money by brokering these services. In some cases, the price of freight drops in the time between customers when contract us (and agree to a price) and the service gets executed (when we contract wit…

Interesting, if the price rises do you pass that on to the customer too or do you take the hit?

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

#23

Lower their prices, without prompting. At Flexport we sell logistics services. The price of ocean freight is highly variable (less dynamic than, say, the stock market or airline seats, but still fluctuates a ton). We make money by brokering these services. In some cases, the price of freight drops in the time between customers when contract us (and agree to a price) and the service gets executed (when we contract wit…

Nice example. What do you do when the price moves against you? Swallow the difference?

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

#25
Tell them the truth, even if it means fewer projects/billable hours for me.

Every single lead I've talked out of working with me, has referred me to another customer and/or came back weeks-years later with a bigger project that did make sense to pursue.

Choice quote: are you allergic to money?

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

#27
I never disagree with a client. Even if I internally feel it won't work in reality, I always start my response with "That's an excellent idea you proposed, let me try if it works and get back to you". I come back after a day or two as to why the proposal won't work (if it was a bad idea to begin with) with sufficient data. Client is happy you that you considered his proposal and you've avoided a potential standoff that could've existed for the same duration !

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

#28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One client used autocad. We re-built it in javascript/html, then added version contol and reports.

I'm curious, how did you handle dwg files? I understand they can be quite complex.

We had them export to pdf, then imported them. Our system stored pdf objects for display. Since it was a migration, backwards compatibility was irrelevant.

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

#30

Tell them the truth, even if it means fewer projects/billable hours for me. Every single lead I've talked out of working with me, has referred me to another customer and/or came back weeks-years later with a bigger project that did make sense to pursue. Choice quote: are you allergic to money?

i would say about half of the leads i talk into trying someone else send a referral, but that isn't why i do it. Our field is so large. It's important to not get distracted. Of course, this assumes you have a plan.
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