Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 288 posts

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

#111

Post by jordanwallwork »

simonswords82 wrote: post #103
erkkie wrote: post #102

Reply to their emails in an timely manner.

We're not setting the bar here very high are we?

It's a little thing, but it's surprising how many people don't - if you've got a lot of work on and a someone's emailing you about something that isn't a priority at the time it's far too easy not to bother replying immediately. It's much better for your client if you just take 20 seconds to shoot back an email to manage their expectations explaining that you've seen the email and you'll aim to take a look and get them a response in the next x days/hours/etc

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

#112

Post by MWil »

Organizing their 4,000 pg VA claims files that are essentially their last 30 years of private and VA health records (usually already organized by facility though), military service, military medical, and the VA claims process

The longer a claims file, the more I get excited because the chance of a VA error is already very high - in a 4,000 pg file I can guarantee at least one big one

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

#113

Post by rocqua »

loteck wrote: post #39

Look at how many of the answers in this thread are simply about communicating effectively. That mirrors my experience when I was on the service provider side, and as someone who is now consuming those same services, I can confirm that I am most impressed by my providers when the communications are focused, helpful and timely.

The only other thing I see is doing simple things that are useful but not requested. I.e. thinking from the users perspective.

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

#114

Post by [deleted] »

loteck wrote: post #39

Look at how many of the answers in this thread are simply about communicating effectively. That mirrors my experience when I was on the service provider side, and as someone who is now consuming those same services, I can confirm that I am most impressed by my providers when the communications are focused, helpful and timely.

[deleted]

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

#115

Post by morgante »

RickS wrote: post #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 gree…

I think the key here is that replies actually have to go to the CEO.

I've seen way too many companies implement this where any replies are actually just sent into normal support channels.

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

#116

Post by Jugurtha »

vcool07 wrote: post #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 th…

That's a classic. While working on the David, Michelangelo had the unwelcome visit of Piero Soderini (statesman, sponsor, etc) who suggested that the nose was too thick.

Michelangelo feigned reworking the nose and some say sprinkled a handful of marble dust to make the trick credible, then asked Soderini if he liked it now. He said it looked better.

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

#117

Post by DrNuke »

As a consultant and advisor, I add value in the sense that I move my clients forward very fast, whatever they need at the stage they are. Need strategy? We devise a plan together. Need sales? We make calls together. Need r&d? I have a network to rely upon. Need introductions? We have a look at the sector and agree the approach. Need a deliverable? We have a look at capabilities and try the shortest path to put out something for sale. Need services? We test the market together. Blowing away = moving forward efficiently, safely and as soon as possible. That said, the ultimate problem everywhere is sales, so just help clients sell their sh*t and they will be happy, very happy, very very happy.

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

#118

Post by skrowl »

raverbashing wrote: post #91
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…

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

Create it as a report in SSRS, then they can export to XLSX, PDF, CSV, etc

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

#119

Post by mlangdon »

raverbashing wrote: post #91
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…

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

Most reasonably popular languages will have platform-independent open source read-write libraries for Excel. I've used the Python version of this with minimal pain.

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

#120

Post by JensRantil »

JoachimS wrote: post #32

One thing we did a few years ago when we found that a customer didn't use revision control was to bring in a server. A small PC with Linux, Subversion and Trac. We not only could explain the benefits of RCS, but the customer could see changes, att issues, get them resolved etc. When the job was done, the customer kept the machine. I occasionally bump into old customers and many still run the same server. All of them…

Do they have a backup of it? :-)
Post reply on HN