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

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

#211

Post by Humdeee »

moflome wrote: post #183

Mobile app development - releasing a binary download (MVP) in a few days which delivers the bulk of the clients required functionality. Somehow, at least for (native?) mobile, the spec to implementation transformation still seems magical to many of our clients. I personally think it's the rapid turn around. It seems there's an expectation still that the development will take longer and thus the reaction?

I do this as well. Simple, rudimentary prototypes can be made in relatively no time flat. And it's never really that ugly anyway.

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

#212

Post by johnnycarcin »

I am in a pre-sales position so I am already typically on the clients shit list. Unlike most of my counterparts, I have lived in the world of ops and development and know how fun it is to get a call at 3am when something is down. I use my past experiences to explain to the customer why I would do things a certain way or why I think something might not be a good fit. I listen to what the customer has to say (something many in my field seem to not understand) and try to come up with something that fits well for THEM, not for my bank account. I have had multiple people from various companies I have worked with tell me that they really appreciated my honesty and I typically get great customer satisfaction reviews, even if the project doesn't go that well.

To me it really is as simple as don't be a dick.

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

#213

Post by GenWintergreen »

chrissnell wrote: post #190

My answer here is more relevant to an e-commerce company but the basic idea can be adapted to any company. So, back in 1994, my dad and me started an ecommerce company (bikeworld.com) that sold bicycle parts online. It was an extension of his brick-and-mortar bicycle business and I took a couple of years leave from college to help him build it. He did one thing early on that generated amazing word-of-mouth support: s…

Goulet pens, a favorite in the fountain pen community, includes a tootsie pop with orders. It's super nice of a touch, even for a person who doesn't dig them.

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

#214

Post by johngalt »

kisna72 wrote: post #164
johngalt wrote: post #150

Generic company sysadmin. I have a rotating list of power user tips. I'll pick one to show someone during a trouble call (provided no one is in a huge hurry). It has to be something cool that I can demonstrate/teach in seconds. Examples: Snipping tool. Rather than writing down error codes. Windows key + start typing the program name. Rather than navigating the start menu. Piles of excel tricks. (everyone loves excel)…

I'd love to learn more excel tricks. Any resource you'd recommend?

Sorry most of it is off the cuff. I always localize it to who they are and what they are working on in that instance. Since my audience is non technical, almost no one decides to just buckle down and 'learn excel'. Commonly this means demonstrating filters and if statements. Pivot tables for the more advanced users.

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

#215

Post by 0xdeadbeefbabe »

bartoszhernas wrote: post #182
cperciva wrote: post #86

If there's a Tarsnap outage because I screwed something up, I give Tarsnap users a credit to their accounts... without waiting for them to complain. Apparently this is unusual. I can't imagine doing it any other way; I mean, who wants to deal with thousands of emails from customers who are owed account credits?

It is wonderfull product, I love simplicity of it. One question though, why don't you allow me to set up recurring billing? Eg. if credits go below 10€, charge 10€.

Hmmm I guess someone could make a service to help you subscribe to tarsnap using stripe. They'd have to keep track of your password though.

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

#216

Post by dzdt »

vog wrote: post #130
mathw wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh gosh yes. Companies love their CSV exports! I think the reason is that it lets them make glue - they can take data from something, play with it, analyse it, produce graphs, using tools they understand (almost invariably Excel), and sometimes then import into another system. Yes, my employer's customers like their CSV imports too. If you're looking at a big data entry feature and they ask you how the interface work…

You're lucky. We always try to explain that CSV is a mostly-clean format while XLS and XLSX are a mess. Yet, most of the time customers insist on XLS export, and we are happy if they at least acccept XLSX instead.

Evil pro-tip : you can output a csv file and name it "foo.xls". Excel will open it fine, with just a click-thru complaint dialog that no one will read anyway.

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

#217

Post by thearn4 »

chrissnell wrote: post #190

My answer here is more relevant to an e-commerce company but the basic idea can be adapted to any company. So, back in 1994, my dad and me started an ecommerce company (bikeworld.com) that sold bicycle parts online. It was an extension of his brick-and-mortar bicycle business and I took a couple of years leave from college to help him build it. He did one thing early on that generated amazing word-of-mouth support: s…

The bag of microwavable popcorn that I get from Advanced Circuits in CO did get me to mention them to other people. It's a good strategy.

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

#218

Post by djmill »

Onsite engineers for UAT and rapid bug fix turnaround. Most bugs reported from customers, during UAT, are fixed by the next morning for another round of testing. This is not always the case, but for most issues, we turn them around in less than 12 hours and the customer is blown away.

This happens ~4 times/year for major releases.

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

#220

Post by snerbles »

ohstopitu wrote: post #168
dfederschmidt wrote: post #158

Installing Adobe Reader. I'll see myself out.

do you install google ultron as well?

Chromium Portable will work as Google Ultron in a pinch, the blue icon really seals the deal.
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