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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?

#181

Post by kasparsklavins »

Rainymood wrote: post #72
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…

I caught my Macro professor doing this and it works wonders. It really encourages people to ask questions, even if they might think they are inane. He always started with a ~sincere~ "X, that is a really good question." It makes everyone feel really welcomed to give their input no matter how small. Even though it might not be "sincere" at all it still feel like it is. How would you feel if you asked a question in cla…

In my experience, the _stupid_ questions are the best ones, provided they are on topic. They hint at an edge case or something not covered deeply enough.

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

#182

Post by bartoszhernas »

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€.

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

#183

Post by moflome »

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?

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

#185

Post by stefek99 »

kayman wrote: post #14

Respond to requests right away. A lot of the time, when a client has a request, they are thinking out loud in the moment. Even if I can't pick up the phone, I'll send a short email straight away to let them know that 1. I got the message 2. Timeframe when I can action

I do this all the time. "Got the message" + please allow some time...

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

#186

Post by db48x »

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€.

Storing credit card numbers is annoying (unless you don't care to do it right, but it's pretty clear he does care). On the other hand, there are payment processors that will handle that sort of thing for you, for a fee.

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

#187

Post by Caerus »

Documentation.

I'm a sort of internal consultant in my company who often interfaces with external customers. I've repeatedly heard that no one else provides as thorough yet easily understood documentation. They value the results, but value truly understanding them and being able to follow how I got them almost as much.

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

#188

Post by TeMPOraL »

ape4 wrote: post #155
majewsky wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Another thing which I don't personally love, but I do because I understand industries have differences is just exporting whatever can be exported into .csv files or .xls files where applicable. Working on an in-house application, this has been one of the most common types of requests. "Can we add this field here to the CSV export?" It's a three-minute task for me, but a huge time-saver for the manager of the team u…

But then exporting the CSV into Excel and doing something becomes part of the workflow. That could possibly be better done in the application.

Not unless your application aims to encompass the entirety of running a business. Otherwise it's just plain user-hostile greed.

Personally, I do love whenever applications allow to export data and lack of such feature is IMO strong negative.

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

#189

Post by arethuza »

manyxcxi wrote: post #156
jerf wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But CSV isn't a mostly clean format. It's a collection of dozens of formats, some of them clean, some of them not, and with no way of labeling which one of the dozens you have in the file itself. Whereas XLS and XLSX, for all their binary cruft, are at least capable of unambiguously (AFAIK) representing, say, a string with a quote and a newline in it. (If there are encoding issues, well, same with CSV.) I suspect you…

XLS and XLSX are neither clear nor unambiguous and I would take 12 CSV formats over either any day. I actually haven't ever met anyone who seriously had to extract data from XLS/X frequently that didn't revile it for its ambiguities. Not to mention the ways that the application munges the user input prior to saving it, leaving the biggest ambiguity of all, what the heck is ACTUALLY in that cell. EDIT: I will add that…

Actually, there are some commercial libraries that make working with even complex Excel spreadsheets pretty straightforward. I've used Aspose.Cells a lot and was very happy with it:

http://www.aspose.com/products/cells

[NB I have no connection with Aspose, just been a happy customer for many years].

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

#190

Post by chrissnell »

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: send a little treat in every order box. Our company was based in San Antonio, TX and Dad decided to include a little local flavor with each order to make us stand out from the few competitors we had back then (incumbent mail order outfits). At every good Mexican restaurant back home, they sell Mexican chewy candies at the cash register when you pay after your meal. My dad and I loved these things so he went to the manufacturer in town and bought a few cases of them. They were really expensive, like $0.50 each, and it became a big expense but the customers went nuts. Dad printed up a little card that he put in the bag with the candy, explaining the tradition and thanking them for their business. It worked well--we quickly became one of the largest online bicycle stores of the late 90s.

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