Slow Reponses – Dear freelancer. You’re not just a developer. This is your business and you need to play ALL the roles of your business. That means, you’re the CEO, senior developer, head of accounting, project manager and of course the receptionist. Now let’s imaging you walk into an airport in a strange country where you don’t speak the language. You need to find out where you’re going, you find the information area and there’s no one available. I’m sure you would get more and more frustrated the longer you wait. 

Well your clients are lost in this world of IT and they don’t know what they don’t know. And to be blunt, there’s no reason for slow response times. Most freelancers would use WhatsApp for general communication between themselves and the client, all you have to do is be clear in your communication. A simple message of clarity will buy you time and consideration.

“Sorry, I’m a little tied up at the moment with a deadline, I’m anticipating to be done with it by x time or day, I’ve then prioritized your work.“

However, if you leave the message unread or unaddressed, your client may wonder if you even got the message, they may feel that maybe you’re just ignoring them and they are frustrating you. Which means they will be reluctant to contact you more and more. Which obviously means less business. 

You don’t have to have good news, just have some news so your client knows what is going on. Even if you don’t know the answer, “Hey [client_name], thank you for your message, I’m not 100% sure about [whatever] at the moment, I’ll need a little more time to look at this properly. Can you give me [some_time_here]?“

I think they main thing is to not make your client feel like they owe you something. Don’t make them feel like a burden to you. Don’t make them beg. They are paying you for a service.