Freelanceswitch always ALWAYS has great articles - I ran across this one today while looking for a new way to phrase the same discussion with a client on a feature he wants on his site that we KNOW is going to be deadly Check out 5 Mistakes here.

Have you encountered any of those problems listed and if so, how did you rectify the issue?

-Did you start your project on the right foot?
-Have you been too available ? (I was guilty, guilty, guilty of this one myself for a long, long time - BOUNDARIES are a VAs best friend )
-Will you let your client sabotage the project (current issue at hand in my world!)
-What if you disagree or argue with a client?
-How will you manage a client's dissatisfaction?

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I love this website and have it in my bloglines to read regularly!

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Kylie Short
Tilda Virtual Services - Making virtual personal

That is awesome! So helpful to those of us who have haven't started yet and have no client relations experience. Thanks for this wonderful resource!

Sam

Great article! Thanks for sharing, Tess!

I especially relate to #4 (I think that's the one about disagreeing/arguing with your client). My current client is writing her grandmother's memoirs and is somewhat old fashioned in her writing style. She used to write a column for a local paper so is actually a pretty good writer. From the beginning, I would automatically make corrections that I thought were needed only to be told that I was making mistakes. I would try to explain to her why I thought it was right. Sometimes, she would agree but still insisted that she wanted the way she wrote it. Over time, I've learned to pick my fights with her and started using the edit feature of Word to make my suggestions for improvements or "corrections" that I think are needed. She loves that I do this and keeps encouraging me to make these suggestions even though she still turns down at least 50% of them. I get such a thrill (secretly doing the fist in the air, "Woohoo! I won" kind of thing in my head) whenever she says, "You know, I like the way you wrote this. It does sound better than what I wrote." It took me a long time, but I'm finally realizing that a lot of what I considered "mistakes" are actually part of her old-fashioned and localized (words, expressions and spellings that she uses) writing style and that it actually suits what she's doing (the memoirs span from the mid 1800's until probably about the 40's). If she was planning on having it published, I may be a bit more insistant on some of my suggestions, especially when it comes to formatting, but she's doing this for her personal benefit (with maybe a few copies for family members), so it's all good.

On a side note, she had a friend look over it not to long ago. She mainly just wanted the friend to glance through it and look at just a few things (she's writing a story, but it almost has a history book format where she'll have inserts giving the reader a glimpse of the times by mentioning popular songs and other current events that happened that year or whatever). She said that the friend ended up reading the whole thing (we're up to 63 pages so far, not including the inserts). When she asked her why, the friend told her that it grabbed and kept her interest. So, she must be doing something right

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Stephanie
New VA in the research phase :daisy:

This is a great article.

How do I manage a client's dissatisfaction? I guess the most important thing is open communication. I always update my clients about the tasks I'm working on so if there will be any problems, we would know earlier in the project. But it seems I’ve been lucky so far in my ventures. I’ve yet to run into a client I’ve had to argue with.