Karen Commins is a talented lady who lives and does her voiceover work from her studio near Atlanta, Georgia. (Listen to her demos here. You’ll see what I mean. Talented.)
Recently Karen posted some thoughts on her blog about providing excellent service to our voiceover clients that really resonates with my own point of view.
I strive to ensure that every client is totally delighted with the work I perform.
Like Karen, I want to leave every client completely delighted with my work. And as she points out, sometimes that’s more difficult than others…
Delays are an inescapable fact of life. Have you thought about safeguards so that you don’t cause a delay?
Your contingency planning for delays and other unavoidable problems can be your saving grace in the eyes of your client.
What will you do if your Internet connection suddenly goes down, and you can’t deliver your recordings when you promised? Do you have some sort of back-up delivery method?
These are really important questions. I have two back-up plans for delivery, and two back-ups for those back-ups. If you haven’t thought about the answers to these questions, I hope you will. (I’ve had to use one of my back-up plans twice in the last year.)
Another question Karen asks is…
What do you do when a client contacts you and needs a recording that you can’t produce in the time allotted because you are ill, on vacation or swamped with other projects?
About 3 months ago, I was the recipient of a job for exactly this reason. A good friend was so busy he couldn’t take a specific job. The friend recommend the producer contact me. I did the job. The producer was happy with my work. Everyone wins. And you can be sure that friend is at the top of my list of people to recommend if the situation is ever reversed.
I commend Karen’s entire article to you. It’s well worth your time to read. It’s even more worth your time to formulate answers to her questions, and even to try to come up with a few more of your own.
You need to read the last point again as it asks what you do when YOU can’t deliver? Not when someone else can’t.
Important point in there not only from a time, location or health perspective. What do you do when you know that even if you’re free you can’t deliver what the client wants?
“I’d love to be able to do this for you but here’s an idea. Give Voice Name a call, brilliant, will really nail this for you. My guess is he’s very busy so when you call tell him I said he’d make time for you, his number is….”
Horror of horrors you lose a job! In the long run, you never lose, never!
Philip,
You wrote: “Horror of horrors you lose a job! In the long run, you never lose, never!”
I agree, strongly. There are some kinds of work for which I’m simply not the right talent. And that’s exactly what I’ve done and will continue to do: recommend someone I believe is a better fit for the work than I am.
As an example, the friend of whom I spoke is brilliant with character voices, something I’m not. He’s at the top of my list of people to recommend for that sort of job.
And given my limitations, there are plenty of other examples. Were I to take the time to list them all, I’d get almost nothing else done.
Thank you for stopping by, Philip; and the thoughtful comments.
Be well,
Bob