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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?

#191

Post by gpayal »

stefek99 wrote: post #177
gpayal wrote: post #49

Consistent updates(mostly daily) on email with screenshots and quick short screencasts. A lot of times a particular feature takes more than a day to complete and be pushed to some server for client to actually see what it looks like. But if I create in progress screenshots and videos from my dev machine it always impresses my clients.

Yeah, always taking screenshots + Screenflow (on Mac) or Camtasia / SnagIt (on Windows)

True that! Clients feel lot involved in the whole process of development this way.

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

#192

Post by gk1 »

Call them out when they're wasting money on marketing. This has been in my "blog post drafts" folder for a while, but the short version is: One of the first things I do on new projects (I'm a customer acquisition consultant) is review the running campaigns and their results from the past few months. Not clicks—which is what all the dashboards show you—but actual results like signups and new customers.

Almost always I find money being drained away. There was the time when a company targeting Python developers was losing its AdWords budget on snake enthusiasts. Another time a mobile analytics company was spending thousands on people searching for free apps. In another case a company whose ads went to a 404 page and nobody realized. Also recently I found that an SEO agency was falsifying results to one of my clients (the contract was quickly terminated).

I don't know if "blown away" is the correct phrase. It's more like a brief moment of embarrassment followed a huge sense of relief that a budget leak was found and plugged.

PS - The companies described here have successful products made by brilliant people. This is more a symptom of hiring the marketers who don't have the skill (or intention) to demonstrate the results of their efforts.

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

#193

Post by franze »

I get marketing, developers, content-people, biz-dev, product, higher management, middle-management ... in one room ... and after 2 days we produce a prioritized roadmap on how to move the company forward. Plus: No dead bodies, they actually liked beeing there.

Most of the time they can't believe it either. It's fun.

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

#194

Post by Piskvorrr »

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?

PHPExcel for, you guessed it, PHP. An order of magnitude less hassle than CSV ("the files you generate are wrong, but only on some computers! Fixitfixitfixit!!!"), and surprisingly powerful.

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

#195

Post by stult »

orly_bookz wrote: post #122
lb1lf wrote: post #94

Whenever I find myself at my desk not knowing what to fill the next few minutes with, I tend to call a more or less random customer - the ones who USE our products, not the ones who procure them - and ask them what they think suck about our current offerings. Most educational, and it has resulted in a number of improvements to our product line (subsea handling equipment - used for deployment and maintenance of subsea…

I used to work with this programmer who would get free beta testers by doing this. Set up a meeting with endusers in one of our training labs and tell them they can complain about whatever they want. Then walk them through a 15-minute set of steps for whatever change we're going to roll out. Not only do you get great feedback on the product as a whole, they'll inevitably find ways to break your new thing within five…

In my business line, we have two kinds of users: the competent ones who have useful complaints but never seem to break anything and the incompetent ones who break everything and have no useful complaints. I try to get a mix when I want feedback on an upgrade or new tool or for more formal UAT. The former group shows me flaws in the data model and UI, the latter shows me the flaws in the business model.

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

#196

Post by bpicolo »

db48x wrote: post #186
bartoszhernas wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Typically you're going to be storing tokens from e.g. Stripe these days, and not raw cards. Major card carriers provide the same service too. Still worth doing well and securely, but much less risky

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

#197

Post by mabbo »

lb1lf wrote: post #94

Whenever I find myself at my desk not knowing what to fill the next few minutes with, I tend to call a more or less random customer - the ones who USE our products, not the ones who procure them - and ask them what they think suck about our current offerings. Most educational, and it has resulted in a number of improvements to our product line (subsea handling equipment - used for deployment and maintenance of subsea…

I used to write software tools used by Amazon associates inside the warehouses (fulfillment centers). I loved meeting the users and asking them 'what sucks about this?'.

A few would be too freaked out by some manager-looking-type asking them any questions. Some would say the usual stuff that we knew but couldn't help. Some would point out a few small annoyances that we would try to improve. Rarely, one would tell you things that blew your mind, like holy shit why didn't we think of that? I kept going back to try to repeat that experience.

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

#198

Post by edoceo »

stefek99 wrote: post #177
gpayal wrote: post #49

Consistent updates(mostly daily) on email with screenshots and quick short screencasts. A lot of times a particular feature takes more than a day to complete and be pushed to some server for client to actually see what it looks like. But if I create in progress screenshots and videos from my dev machine it always impresses my clients.

Yeah, always taking screenshots + Screenflow (on Mac) or Camtasia / SnagIt (on Windows)

SimpleScreenRecorder on Linux

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

#199

Post by naasking »

JoachimS wrote: post #36
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…

Interesting. We usually say that a good consultant should be senior enough to stand up to the customer and at least be able to inquire the basis for something. And also disagree when the customer is clearly wrong. But your way of doing it clearly removes the initial head-on. One could always reason about things. But to promise to investigate (and then deliver) looks (and is) professional. But I will never say yes whe…

> We usually say that a good consultant should be senior enough to stand up to the customer and at least be able to inquire the basis for something.

Totally, but there are good and bad responses. I usually go with something like, "It seems we're not capturing or making some important information available, so can you describe the core problem that your suggestion solves so we can better understand how to implement it?" Usually a better solution arises from the ensuing back and forth.

Everyone solves problems by drawing on their domain of knowledge, and customers' knowledge is simply more limited than a software developers' when it comes to computing. The software developers' domain knowledge is much more limited when it comes to the customers' business though, so some humility on both sides is warranted.

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

#200

Post by abakker »

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…

Sweetwater sound still includes a handful of smarties, and other similar basic candies with every order. I always enjoyed this, even when I didn't want to eat all the candies. Its just fun.
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