How To Deal With Students As Customers

If you have a younger sibling, you know how frustrating, unreliable and high-maintenance your clients can be. Still, your income depends on their satisfaction and willingness to come back and order more papers from you. To save yourself needless aggravation, heed our freelance writing advice that will make your life easier.

Understand Who Your Customers Are

The first among the many freelance writing tips is the need to understand the client. When you write academic works and deal with students as customers, you should remember their peculiar features and behave accordingly. Your clients are:

• Young and impulsive. That means that you should take on the role of a responsible adult in your professional relationship and control its development. Even though the customer is always right, you should feel confident about your work and be able to assert your position in case of a disagreement.
• Disorganized and forgetful. Smartphones and the Internet have turned students into accomplished procrastinators. You will have to deal with unrealistic deadlines and expectations of a college student. Don’t expect the clients to remember your request for extra information; you will need to be the organized one and keep a constant stream of reminders.
• Stingy and cunning. College students’ needs and wants are simple. They wish to get the job done without overpaying. To save the money, they can try to trick you into doing extra work, like adding another page or two to the paper requirements, even if they haven’t paid for the extra volume. You can agree to make small adjustments to stay on the client’s good side, but never take on extra work if it is not compensated.
• Nervous and distrustful. Even those students who have already worked with you will have doubts about the quality of the writing, your ability to meet the deadline and the risk of getting caught and accused of academic dishonesty. With students as customers, you will need to be patient. Answer the questions honestly, provide good writing, and next time your customers will be more confident about using your services.

Set The Rules And Follow Them

Whether you are a newbie academic writer or an experienced one, setting boundaries with clients is the key to a successful freelance career. Create a new file and list the rules of your dealings with customers, print them out and hang the list where you can easily see it from your workspace. Whenever you are in doubt or don’t know how to deal with students as customers, reread the set of rules and follow them. The sooner you start practicing this freelance writing advice, the more grief you will save yourself.

There are some common freelance writing tips and rules most freelance writers adopt:

1. Decline orders you can’t complete before the deadline.
2. Never start working on an order without a full set of instructions.
3. Do not let customers use curse words in your communication.
4. Do not revise the paper if the client’s comments contradict initial instructions.
5. Be the responsible adult in your professional relationship with clients.
6. Never bend or break your own freelance writing rules.

You can add any number of rules to this short list and make it your working code. Revise the set of regulations you follow every time you get in trouble with customers or support managers. You create these rules to avoid problems and succeed, so be flexible and adapt to new situations. This way your code will stay relevant.

Learn To Communicate And Build Relationships

One of the best freelance writing advice you can get is to learn to communicate with your clients. Efficient communication should bring expected results within the shortest amount of time and with minimal effort on your part. To reach this goal, use our simple guidelines:

• Mind your language. We have already established the peculiarities of your customers, so make sure you don’t use complicated technical terms and jargon in your messages. Avoid inappropriate abbreviations, like 4u or g8. Proofread your communications before sending them, since clients won’t believe in your writing talent if you make five mistakes in a short message.
• Ask questions. You need to understand the college students’ needs and wants before you write papers for them. If any of the requirements are murky and incomprehensible, reach out and ask for clarification. It will save you time and eliminate the risk of getting fined for missing the deadline or not following the client’s instructions.
• Reply quickly. Don’t reply to the customer’s messages the instant you get them, or you will set up an expectation that you will always answer immediately. Determine the optimal interval to check new messages and set the appropriate response time according to the order’s deadline. If the matter is urgent, the client can always reach you through support managers.
• Stay calm. Even face-to-face interactions are complicated sometimes, so don’t be surprised if customers don’t understand your questions or requests. Getting frustrated won’t help you settle the matter, so stay calm, explain what you need in other words and be patient.

Setting boundaries with clients is a critical step in your freelance writing career. Use our freelance writing tips to hone your professional communication skills and build strong relationships with good customers. Happy clients will always come back for your services and pay you handsomely for your high-quality writing.