Freelancer's Job: 5 steps to improve efficiency in your workplace

However, a memorable customer experience is proven to drive customer loyalty. For a freelancer, this is a great way to grow and stabilize your business. You've probably already taken steps to ensure that customers have a pleasant experience with your services or products. And to take it a step further, today we're bringing you 5 steps to improve your customer experience as a freelancer.

What is customer experience in a company

Customer experience includes both factual and emotional criteria. In the first case, it is everything that is created to satisfy the customer's needs: product quality, point of sale, after-sales service, etc. But good customer experience is also related to the quality of the customer's experience. But good customer experience is also based on emotional (and more subjective) factors: values conveyed, quality of relationships, perceived benefits, aesthetics, and so on.

We often think that customer experience is only about the stages of a purchase or freelancer's service. On the contrary, it can be found in all interactions between you and your customers (both as individuals and as a brand): your communication, your marketing, the design of your offerings, your exchanges, and so on.

More generally, we talk about customer experience as all the stages before, during and after a purchase that any customer goes through. The more positive the experience, the more likely a person is to return to the same company. For you, as a freelancer, it's the same. Taking care of the freelancer experience is critical to the satisfaction and retention of your current clients.

How can I improve the freelance customer experience for my clients

If you sometimes struggle to stand out from the crowd as a freelancer, you should know that customer experience is one of the key differentiators. It is what determines whether someone would rather do business with you than someone else. And if you're a bit confused by all this, here are 5 simple steps that will help you improve your customer experience dramatically.

Get to know your ideal client from the inside out

Identifying and learning about your ideal client is the foundation of your business. It is what will help you formulate a relevant offer to meet their needs. But it will also help you define a seamless customer journey and experience. If you haven't done so already, we recommend that you don't skip this step for the sake of your business.

Think you have a few profiles of your ideal customers? Repeat this analysis as many times as necessary, as you will need to adhere to the expectations of each of these profiles. The more information you have about your potential clients, the easier it will be to offer them exactly what they want from you and your services.

This is where it's all about putting yourself in the shoes of your ideal client (but you can also gather factual information by asking them questions directly!). You need to understand who they are, what their problems are, what their real needs are, what their fears are, what their habits are, what their aspirations are, what their dreams are, and so on. In short, everything you need to build long-lasting, quality customer relationships.

Define the customer journey before and after a service or purchase is made

As you've already realized, customer experience is a very broad concept that can be optimized at every stage of a purchase or freelance service. To act on the exact levels of the relationship between you and your client, you need to visualize the customer journey.

It's about mapping all possible interactions between your brand and products/services and your customers or potential customers.

And this is where we look at all stages

• Pre-sale or pre-purchase: all points of contact before the purchase, considering your solution, learning about the customer's needs, etc;
• During the service or purchase: the progress of the collaboration or purchase decision, the duration and stages of the purchase;
• After the service or purchase is complete: both the use of your product (physical or digital) and what happens after the freelancer is finished.

Try to describe each of these stages in detail, combining your feelings (what you see) with those of your clients (what they say). Your goal: identify which stages can be optimized to further enhance the customer experience.

Optimize commercial exchanges

A large part of your company's customer experience is made up of various touchpoints and commercial exchanges. Naturally, your customer is a person dealing with another person (you and/or your brand). Therefore, they expect to be treated as an individual. This is why personalized service has never been more important, no matter what field you work in.

So you need to strive to improve every direct or indirect interaction you have with a potential client or customer. As a freelancer, and therefore mostly self-employed, this may seem like a relatively simple task. But if you're multiplying communication channels (social media as well as email and phone contacts), you need to make sure you're accessible and relevant to each of them.

This could mean sharing information faster, digitizing all documents and signatures on contracts (like sending quotes and invoices via Freebe), clear and complete information, quality content, and so on.

Build a complete customer onboarding process

The customer onboarding process refers not only to how you welcome each new customer, but also how you lead them after the purchase or end of service. Thus, it is a very important process that needs to be clarified in your business to ensure that your out-of-state customers are satisfied. Naturally, it is part of the overall customer experience for everyone who buys from you or accesses your services.

There are many actions you can take in an onboarding program, depending on your business and your offering. For example, you can.

• Greet each new customer directly or with an automated, personalized email sequence;
• Set up a call or meeting to launch your service;
• Send out a user guide for your digital or physical product;
• Invite a client to collaborate on a shared dashboard in the case of a long assignment or complex project.

In short, the client acquisition process varies greatly from freelancer to freelancer. Again, it is built around the needs and expectations of your ideal client. The goal: give your new client the welcome they deserve and convince them to choose to work with you!

Collect constructive feedback from your clients

There is no better way to optimize your customer experience than to ask for feedback. This applies equally to updating your offer and optimizing all customer-related processes in your auto-entrepreneur business. By constantly listening to your customers, you'll be able to determine what's important to them.

You may encounter problems or shortcomings that you didn't realize at first glance. That's why it's so important to get specific feedback from anyone who has used your services or products. It's also the only way to deal with any dissatisfaction in real time.

Feel free to send out questionnaires or surveys to your customers on all aspects of their experience. Of course, about their overall satisfaction with the product or service, but don't forget about everything around them as well. For example, the exchange, the smoothness of the sales stages, the tools and processes used, etc. A user may be very happy with the product but, for example, have difficulty logging into their account!

Finally, conducting a full diagnosis of the freelancer's customer experience is sometimes more difficult than taking concrete actions. The most important thing is to adapt to the real needs of your clients, not what you think is good for them. Of course, this doesn't mean that 100% of your clients will be completely satisfied with their experience with you (there is always a feeling that you can't influence).