When you work exclusively on-line as I do at WPDude.com, creating comfort with your clients so they will pay you is a huge thing.
Once people have worked with you once, they see you are legitimate the task is not so big, but bringing on board new clients who have never worked with you is a tough thing, you need to create a feeling of ease.
One of the ways I create client comfort is with our no fix no fee guarantee.
How Our Guarantee Works
It’s pretty simple, if after we have accepted your project and taken our standard 50% deposit we find that we cannot fix your problem, I will refund your deposit payment.
Times When I Have Invoked The Guarantee
I’ve refunded clients for a few reasons, and they are:
- We misunderstood the request, we recently worked on a plugin configuration project but the client wanted a plugin redevelopment
- The site configuration does not allow us to create a fix, an example of this was with a performance tuning project, we simply could not speed up the site due to the hosting configuration.
- The estimate we gave was wrong for the job, sometimes I’ll send out a quote believing the problem was X but in fact it it Y, where Y is a much larger project, rather than trying to weasel out of a fixed price deal, I will give a refund.
- We don’t have the technical skills to fix the problem, very rarely do we see this, but one time I was working on a custom plugin coding issue, and I simply did not have the technical chops to solve this woocommerce issue. So I found a WooCoomerce extension expert, refunded the deposit and sent my client to someone who could fix it for them.
Has A Client Asked for It?
I’m struggling to think of a time when a client has initiated the guarantee, it has mostly been from our end.
A number of clients double check this is true when ordering services from us but I cannot remember anyone asking for their money back.
How Often Have We Done This?
Unscientifically I’ve logged into Paypal and searched for the number of refunds I have made since 2008, the total was 17.
This is a tiny tiny percentage of the jobs we have completed I’m happy to say.
Other Ways We Create Comfort
Our guarantee is not the only way we create client comfort, here are some of the other methods we use
- Deposit / final payment, the final payment is only due when the client is completely happy
- Client testimonials, we can prove we know what we are doing and our current clients like us
- Blog full of case studies, I write up lots of real world case studies of problems we have solved
- Fixed price quotes, no price creapage
- Longevity, we’ve been doing this since 2008 we are not a fly by night organisation
Does Comfort Work?
I think so, this week I sent out my 4000th quote, so we must be doing something correct and creating ease and comfort in our potential clients.
Wrap Up
How do you overcome any objections with your online clients? I would love to know other techiques people use.
