Ask HN: What is something you do for clients that consistently blows them away? - fapi1974
======
Zyst
Most of these seem to be very on the side of "I'm a company", so as a sole
developer what I like to do for clients is implementing sockets into their
apps.

Adding sockets for, say, the 3 newest logs they get in real time. Or if they
have anything that maps to a graph/app-overview just make sure that will
always update in real time. It's not a huge time investment for me. Customers
usually never request it specifically. But I've found they are blown away when
they see how everything is updated in real time. It just makes the whole thing
feel 'alive'.

Another thing which I don't personally love, but I do because I understand
industries have differences is just exporting whatever can be exported into
.csv files or .xls files where applicable.

All in all, I work in consulting. The code I write is meant to make the life
of people easier, I want to make sure they get that when possible. A big part
of why I'm able to do this is that I have a lot of creative freedom to do
whatever I want so long as I'm getting stuff shipped. So huzzah for
comprehensive management as well!

~~~
raverbashing
How would you export it to xls? ActiveX Excel controller ("in my time this was
called COM", etc)? Open source library?

~~~
michaelmior
tablib[0] is one option for Python. There are quite a few libraries that
handle export. Excel files (and other Office) file formats are just zip files
containing XML. For a while now, this has been an open standard[1].

[0]
[https://github.com/kennethreitz/tablib](https://github.com/kennethreitz/tablib)

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_Open_XML](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_Open_XML)

~~~
rgacote
I've found the Python pyexcel library to be the most flexible option to
read/write Excel files.
[https://pypi.python.org/pypi/pyexcel/0.0.9](https://pypi.python.org/pypi/pyexcel/0.0.9)

~~~
michaelmior
Curious if you've tried tablib. I haven't used either, but knowing
kenneth_reitz tablib is quality :)

------
lb1lf
Whenever I find myself at my desk not knowing what to fill the next few
minutes with, I tend to call a more or less random customer - the ones who USE
our products, not the ones who procure them - and ask them what they think
suck about our current offerings.

Most educational, and it has resulted in a number of improvements to our
product line (subsea handling equipment - used for deployment and maintenance
of subsea wellheads, submarine communication&power cables, &c, &c.)

They all expect you to ask what feature they like best; they're always baffled
when you rather ask where we've screwed up - and more than happy to help! :)

This is very cheap and effective market research.

~~~
orly_bookz
I used to work with this programmer who would get free beta testers by doing
this.

Set up a meeting with endusers in one of our training labs and tell them they
can complain about whatever they want. Then walk them through a 15-minute set
of steps for whatever change we're going to roll out.

Not only do you get great feedback on the product as a whole, they'll
inevitably find ways to break your new thing within five minutes. Literally a
few hours of two analysts' time and you might avoid dozens if not hundreds of
man hours spent fixing things. It was beautiful. And just like you said... the
customers are amazed that you _want_ them to complain. They love it.

~~~
stult
In my business line, we have two kinds of users: the competent ones who have
useful complaints but never seem to break anything and the incompetent ones
who break everything and have no useful complaints. I try to get a mix when I
want feedback on an upgrade or new tool or for more formal UAT. The former
group shows me flaws in the data model and UI, the latter shows me the flaws
in the business model.

------
chrissnell
My answer here is more relevant to an e-commerce company but the basic idea
can be adapted to any company.

So, back in 1994, my dad and me started an ecommerce company (bikeworld.com)
that sold bicycle parts online. It was an extension of his brick-and-mortar
bicycle business and I took a couple of years leave from college to help him
build it.

He did one thing early on that generated amazing word-of-mouth support: send a
little treat in every order box. Our company was based in San Antonio, TX and
Dad decided to include a little local flavor with each order to make us stand
out from the few competitors we had back then (incumbent mail order outfits).
At every good Mexican restaurant back home, they sell Mexican chewy candies at
the cash register when you pay after your meal. My dad and I loved these
things so he went to the manufacturer in town and bought a few cases of them.
They were really expensive, like $0.50 each, and it became a big expense but
the customers went nuts. Dad printed up a little card that he put in the bag
with the candy, explaining the tradition and thanking them for their business.
It worked well--we quickly became one of the largest online bicycle stores of
the late 90s.

~~~
Cerium
Thanks for the story. Advanced Circuits (aka 4pcb.com) includes a package of
microwave popcorn with every prototype order—since they know you will be up
all night when the package arrives.

~~~
fraserharris
They used to (maybe still do) have a pizza & pop special for students. It was
something like $199 to print 4 copies of your PCB and you get a large pizza
and 2L of pop from Domino's Pizza. I got it as an engineering student in
Canada, and was disappointed to learn upon delivery that the coupon could only
be used in the USA. I had to wait to use it til my next climbing road trip to
Red Rock Canyon.

------
tiffani
We call them back.

I run The Human Utility (formerly the Detroit Water Project) and we help folks
with their water bills. When they reach us, they're used to dealing with other
social service agencies that aren't very responsive and don't do something as
basic as ever calling them back. We do and we find that people are grateful
even for that.

Edit: People are happy to hear from us regardless of whether we actually help
with their bills. If we say we can't, at least they know to try elsewhere and
can do so fairly quickly.

~~~
Insanity
I have to +1 this. Whilst I have never specifically dealt with Human Utility.
A couple of times when I had an inquiry or an issue, I have been offered to be
called back later rather than wait and eventuall call back myself. Each time I
appreciated the phone call.

Something so simple, yet great for customers!

------
gkoberger
When I did freelancing, I charged a bit more than I felt I should... but went
above and beyond. My hourly rate may have been high, but I spent many "non-
billable hours" making sure everything worked great and any changes (their
fault or mine) were accounted for.

I did a few jobs where someone else controlled the billing, and kept us on a
tight schedule. Every hour was billed. We were "fired" (AKA contract not
renewed) every time. Yet when I went above and beyond, I had no problem
getting and maintaining awesome clients.

As someone on the opposite side now (hiring freelancers), I've realized the
thing I value most: the freelancer gives me less work, not more. It may seem
obvious, but when I was on the other side, it wasn't. When I hire freelancers
now, I value one overarching quality: to make my life easier. I don't care
about price or hours (within reason), I care about not having to think about
it.

~~~
haarts
I'm going to print that on a tile: "The freelancer gives me less work, not
more."

------
vcool07
I never disagree with a client. Even if I internally feel it won't work in
reality, I always start my response with "That's an excellent idea you
proposed, let me try if it works and get back to you". I come back after a day
or two as to why the proposal won't work (if it was a bad idea to begin with)
with sufficient data. Client is happy you that you considered his proposal and
you've avoided a potential standoff that could've existed for the same
duration !

~~~
JoachimS
Interesting. We usually say that a good consultant should be senior enough to
stand up to the customer and at least be able to inquire the basis for
something. And also disagree when the customer is clearly wrong. But your way
of doing it clearly removes the initial head-on.

One could always reason about things. But to promise to investigate (and then
deliver) looks (and is) professional.

But I will never say yes when a customer suggests to "encrypt dsta using the
cipher md5". Yes it has happened. More than once.

~~~
sirclueless
So, to follow the diplomatic approach here:

Client: "Encrypt our data using the md5 cipher."

Consultant: "I will investigate the feasibility of this."

... two days pass ...

Consultant: "I have considered your proposal. I believe we should encrypt your
data with SHA-256. md5 is insecure, here's several references. SHA-256 is much
more secure and more popular. It is a NIST standard, and just as cheap."

Client: (probably) "OK, if it costs the same and is more secure, sounds good
to us."

~~~
p0nce
Except you can't encrypt with a hash function.

~~~
JoachimS
Actually you can use a cryptographic hash function such as SHA-256 (or MD5,
but lets not go there) as the core of a stream cipher. Basically stick a seed
(key) combined with a counter as input to the hash functiom. Use the output as
the keystream. Stream ciphers such as ChaCha are basically block based PRFs
that operates like this.

Of course the performance would be silly compared to dedicated functions.
ChaCha20 has less than a third the number of iterations compared to SHA-256.
And each iteration is much faster.

Good thread: [http://crypto.stackexchange.com/questions/48/is-it-
feasible-...](http://crypto.stackexchange.com/questions/48/is-it-feasible-to-
build-a-stream-cipher-from-a-cryptographic-hash-function)

------
RickS
Here's an internal facing one: We send an automated greeting from the CEO as
part of onboarding, but he actually sees and replies to every customer
response, in both english and spanish, and forwards the more heartwarming ones
on to the entire office.

It's pretty cool to get a handful of emails every day from actual customers
who are very grateful for the work we do.

It also changed my opinion on the "canned CEO greeting". As someone who knows
how those are built, they always struck me as annoying and disingenuous sales
gimmicks, but our customers are significantly less tech savvy, and a huge
number take the correspondence at face value and actually start a real
conversation with the CEO.

~~~
mercer
I generally respond rather negatively to automated emails or chat messages
that seem human but are not, and I've been thinking of how I would approach
this if I had a company big enough that automatic greetings are 'necessary'
(or desirable, at least).

Perhaps one solution is to use a clearly non-human company 'avatar' character
specifically for some of these interactions? A robot or pet character?

~~~
paleite
How about a clip?

~~~
x97256
only if it has giant eyeballs and doesn't disappear no matter how hard you try
to make it go away... Otherwise, it just seems disingenuous.

------
rdpowers
I do hardware engineering work for hire and one of the things that always
works is having some documentation ready at _the first_ formal meeting.

Specifically, I have a skeleton requirements document that I put together from
our previous correspondence (there's always a phone call, few emails, etc.)
trying to flesh out their project needs. It doesn't matter if this is
incomplete, inaccurate, or any other in-word. It shows that I'm a professional
who has tried to understand the problem, the business case, possible
solutions, will approach it methodically and like a real engineer, and that I
know what I'm doing.

Those 10-15, printed, very real, pages, mostly just ?-marks, have written me
more contracts than I can count. It takes about 1-2 hours of work to write
things up, but I've never - not once -, had a potential client fail to notice
and be impressed when I show up and have a presentable document already
underway.

~~~
jenkstom
This is generally the way to win contracts, grants and impress people. Going
over their requirements carefully, whether written or verbal, and gearing your
proposal directly to what they say always impresses. That's why changing
project managers at the beginning of or before a contract starts is a big
problem.

------
cperciva
If there's a Tarsnap outage because I screwed something up, I give Tarsnap
users a credit to their accounts... without waiting for them to complain.

Apparently this is unusual. I can't imagine doing it any other way; I mean,
who wants to deal with thousands of emails from customers who are owed account
credits?

~~~
bartoszhernas
It is wonderfull product, I love simplicity of it.

One question though, why don't you allow me to set up recurring billing? Eg.
if credits go below 10€, charge 10€.

~~~
db48x
Storing credit card numbers is annoying (unless you don't care to do it right,
but it's pretty clear he does care). On the other hand, there are payment
processors that will handle that sort of thing for you, for a fee.

~~~
bpicolo
Typically you're going to be storing tokens from e.g. Stripe these days, and
not raw cards. Major card carriers provide the same service too. Still worth
doing well and securely, but much less risky

------
gpayal
Consistent updates(mostly daily) on email with screenshots and quick short
screencasts. A lot of times a particular feature takes more than a day to
complete and be pushed to some server for client to actually see what it looks
like. But if I create in progress screenshots and videos from my dev machine
it always impresses my clients.

~~~
stefek99
Yeah, always taking screenshots + Screenflow (on Mac) or Camtasia / SnagIt (on
Windows)

~~~
j_s
Appreciate the recommendations. For Windows I recommend ShareX:
[https://github.com/ShareX/ShareX](https://github.com/ShareX/ShareX)

Tools like these also make it easy to create documentation that is a step-by-
step walkthrough of each process.

There is also an entire class of tools designed to screenshot automatically to
track work:
[http://alternativeto.net/software/timesnapper/](http://alternativeto.net/software/timesnapper/)

------
dbg31415
These are a few things that have gotten me praise over the years:

1) Keep emails short. I set a 200 word max on all emails. If you can't say
what you need to say in 200 words, schedule a meeting to discuss. If you have
to send long documents, send a 2-3 sentence summary. Tell them what you're
going to tell them, tell them, tell them what you told them... in 200 words.
(=

2) Keep detailed time records and make them available to the client on-demand.
They paid for it, might as well show them what they are getting. Be honest...
if your team wasted 4 hours trying to make sense of a BS email from the
client... make sure they understand that.

3) Being on time and inclusive; inviting them to daily standup meetings with
the team, and posting notes from those standup meetings in case they (or
anyone else) can't be there. Easy with a Google Sheet to just type a few notes
each day during standup. I don't have any tools for the team that the client
can't access, or hasn't been given a rundown on how we utilize it.

~~~
Jaruzel
I like the 200 word thing. I'm gonna give that go. :)

------
gk1
Call them out when they're wasting money on marketing. This has been in my
"blog post drafts" folder for a while, but the short version is: One of the
first things I do on new projects (I'm a customer acquisition consultant) is
review the running campaigns and their results from the past few months. Not
clicks—which is what all the dashboards show you—but actual results like
signups and new customers.

Almost always I find money being drained away. There was the time when a
company targeting Python developers was losing its AdWords budget on snake
enthusiasts. Another time a mobile analytics company was spending thousands on
people searching for free apps. In another case a company whose ads went to a
404 page and nobody realized. Also recently I found that an SEO agency was
falsifying results to one of my clients (the contract was quickly terminated).

I don't know if "blown away" is the correct phrase. It's more like a brief
moment of embarrassment followed a huge sense of relief that a budget leak was
found and plugged.

PS - The companies described here have successful products made by brilliant
people. This is more a symptom of hiring the marketers who don't have the
skill (or intention) to demonstrate the results of their efforts.

------
JoachimS
One thing we did a few years ago when we found that a customer didn't use
revision control was to bring in a server. A small PC with Linux, Subversion
and Trac. We not only could explain the benefits of RCS, but the customer
could see changes, att issues, get them resolved etc. When the job was done,
the customer kept the machine.

I occasionally bump into old customers and many still run the same server. All
of them are today using revision control systems.

So basically we didn't just provide a tech solution, but also brought in
methodology and free tools to implement that methodology.

~~~
JensRantil
Do they have a backup of it? :-)

~~~
itsthecourier
The client accepted a faustinian deal there! :p

~~~
JoachimS
;-)

I hope and don't think so. Demanding them to use ClearCase, that would however
been pure evil.

------
seanlinehan
Lower their prices, without prompting. At Flexport we sell logistics services.
The price of ocean freight is highly variable (less dynamic than, say, the
stock market or airline seats, but still fluctuates a ton). We make money by
brokering these services. In some cases, the price of freight drops in the
time between customers when contract us (and agree to a price) and the service
gets executed (when we contract with the asset owner). We pass those savings
on to the customer and let them know. This usually results in big joy, all
around.

~~~
BigJono
Interesting, if the price rises do you pass that on to the customer too or do
you take the hit?

~~~
seanlinehan
Depends on the situation. Our rates have expiration dates attached to them, so
if the price went up before our negotiated rate expired, we will eat it. If
the rates expired, we leave it to the judgment of their account manager on
what to do.

~~~
ohstopitu
just out of curiosity - the value that your customers see...is it actual cost
+ your fee? (hence you can collect the fee even if the actual cost reduces?)

~~~
seanlinehan
Yeah, classic brokerage biz model. We contract in bulk with asset owners and
sell piecemeal.

------
johngalt
Generic company sysadmin.

I have a rotating list of power user tips. I'll pick one to show someone
during a trouble call (provided no one is in a huge hurry). It has to be
something cool that I can demonstrate/teach in seconds. Examples:

Snipping tool. Rather than writing down error codes.

Windows key + start typing the program name. Rather than navigating the start
menu.

Piles of excel tricks. (everyone loves excel)

The big thing is knowing your audience. People enjoy _participating_ in
something, not just being shown things they can never accomplish. If you make
it something they can't understand it will just make them feel stupid or
frustrated.

~~~
kisna72
I'd love to learn more excel tricks. Any resource you'd recommend?

~~~
trevorcreech
Joel Spolsky has a surprisingly entertaining video about excel features:
[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0nbkaYsR94c](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0nbkaYsR94c)

------
fapi1974
I'll add one here from my own business, which is customer care outsourcing.
The outbound call. Basically it comes with the territory when things go wrong.
But when you call the customer before they realize things have gone wrong they
are always, always grateful and impressed. Same thing goes for a "just
checking in to see you are enjoying the service" call. Since we have agents
sitting around all the time anyway this is time that can be used to call up
customers and impress them.

~~~
justintocci
Yes, this is true. We have set up a ping to all our clients external ip. If
they go down, we know immediately. Client never fails to be impressed.

~~~
cyberferret
Yep. we do this too. Whenever we develop a web service for a customer, we set
up uptime monitoring on the server where the app is hosted, but I also set up
ping uptime checks on most of their other server infrastructure as well.

Just last week, I was alerted at 5am that a client's email server had gone
offline. Nothing to do with us, we don't look after their emails at all, but I
immediately texted their IT guy to let him know.

He texted me back at 6am - their own uptime monitors somehow failed to detect
the DNS issue. He managed to fix it before their staff got to work that
morning, and was extremely grateful that I had given him advanced heads up on
something that was totally outside the scope of what they had engaged us for.

~~~
JshWright
Perhaps this is just a product of working at a very privacy-centric company,
but I would be _super_ creeped out by that...

~~~
cyberferret
Context: We've worked with this client for 10+ years, I know their IT team
really well. They are not a super huge organisation, and we are a tiny (read:
3 man) operation too, so the reliance on each other's services is something we
consider important to keep everything moving forward.

------
loteck
Look at how many of the answers in this thread are simply about communicating
effectively.

That mirrors my experience when I was on the service provider side, and as
someone who is now consuming those same services, I can confirm that I am most
impressed by my providers when the communications are focused, helpful and
timely.

~~~
wiz21c
>>> Look at how many of the answers in this thread are simply about
communicating effectively.

spot on

------
kayman
Respond to requests right away.

A lot of the time, when a client has a request, they are thinking out loud in
the moment. Even if I can't pick up the phone, I'll send a short email
straight away to let them know that

1\. I got the message 2\. Timeframe when I can action

~~~
stefek99
I do this all the time. "Got the message" \+ please allow some time...

------
cyberferret
1\. Deliver just a little more than they expect. Most times when we write a
web app for enterprise customers, we try and give them a little bit of extra
functionality than they ask for. One example is the user profile settings for
their sign on to our web apps - most customers are only bothered with having a
username and password, but we often incorporate things like ability to choose
avatar images or upload their own images against their profile.

We did this on one education site we developed, and also gave them the ability
to choose from about a dozen 'stock' cartoon style avatars if they didn't want
to upload their own images. The users were impressed at the handover training
session we ran, but I overhead one guy (who was indigenous Australian
aboriginal descent) jokingly remark that the stock avatars didn't have a
person of indigenous culture represented.

I took note of that, and when I returned to the office, we added a handful of
indigenous avatars as well within the hour. Client was happy that we went the
extra mile to take their offhand comment seriously and deliver on it.

2\. Saying 'No' to 'easy money' projects. We've worked with some of our
clients for over 20 years now. Mainly because often when they come to us to
add on features to their custom written apps, we often say 'No', along with
some valid data to explain why we thing the $$$ sunk into the added feature
are of very little benefit.

This has lead to them trusting us a LOT more when we go the other way. Real
world case study - we had one client, whom we developed a short term loan
application for, ask us to add a Monday morning report with customer mobile
numbers so they could do a ring around check for customers who were about to
default on their loans.

I said 'Sure, but lets go one better'. I said that along with the report, it
wouldn't take much extra work to actually have the system send out an SMS
message to all those clients as well, with details on their upcoming defaults,
and what they needed to do to fix the issue.

They were delighted and said to go for it. Well, that was two years ago, and
it turns out that the SMS messages by themselves have reduced their default
rate by an incredible amount, and they are FAR more profitable as a result.
Hmm, maybe I should have asked for a percentage of profit increase as my
payment! :)

------
julienmarie
Something we were doing when I had a web design agency was to have awesomely
beautiful and detaild proposals where we summed up the context, constraints
and goals of the project. We considered them as our first deliverable and
spent time creating beautiful indesign templates. It allowed us to stand out
from the start. Another thing is while our competitors were usually not
showing anything yet at this bidding stage, we were already delivering some
high def mockups, sometimes within the weekend. Last thing, we didn't have any
sales people. Meetings with leads and customers were directly being handled by
tech leads and lead designers, who were not there to sell, but to advise and
find solutions with the client, explaining and integrating the client within
the process from the start. All in all, we won all the biddings at the time
despite being usually 30% more expensive. Something we were doing also is to
include free perks that didn't cost us anything and was making a lot of
difference for them ( free access to our email marketing platform, server
monitoring, etc... ).

~~~
zielperson
This is so important.

We had this experience (as a client) when we went around to find a venue for
our wedding (100 people).

The restaurant that got the bid wrote us a personalized letter, included
information on the town and hotels that would be available for guests nearby,
etc etc..

The rest just sent short notes.

As a leader in an IT department, I asked for proposals for a 40K software
review.

All of them responded with no-brainer copypaste letters. All but ONE, who took
their time to make a good, detailed offer.

They called me, we met for an hour with their experts, THEN they made a
thoroughly thought out offer.

Guess who got the job?

------
babayega2
I discuss wit a client about some data they collect using an Excel form.
Prototype quickly under one hour a small CRUD app based on Django and set
Django Import-Export [0]

Get an easier Excel sheet containing data. They're gaga about that. I've won
contracts just by showing them that they will get all the data in an Excel
sheet.

[0]: [https://github.com/django-import-export/django-import-
export](https://github.com/django-import-export/django-import-export)

~~~
tomcam
Sweet move. A lot of stars on Github tells me you are spreading lots of joy to
your peers all over.

------
gmarcus
My business develops mobile apps for clients. They love when I analyze major
announcements from Apple / Google and explain how the new features may apply
to their apps. They feel they have a partner, and it typically results in new
development for us.

------
notlisted
Tell them the truth, even if it means fewer projects/billable hours for me.

Every single lead I've talked out of working with me, has referred me to
another customer and/or came back weeks-years later with a bigger project that
did make sense to pursue.

Choice quote: are you allergic to money?

~~~
justintocci
i would say about half of the leads i talk into trying someone else send a
referral, but that isn't why i do it. Our field is so large. It's important to
not get distracted. Of course, this assumes you have a plan.

------
pknerd
I am a developer and usually writes web scrapers or automation tools most of
the time beside typical web development. A couple of things I did and worked
for me.

\- I offer them more than what they expect. At times scraping additional info
which I think is useful but they did not realize I extract that too. Sometimes
they ask for the script or data, one of them and I just offer them both and
they appreciate it lot. Though that _script_ is not helpful for them and they
eventually come to me but it's just increase their trust.

\- It sounds silly and dangerous but often I don't ask advanced payment from
clients and prefer to show off some skills, mostly it was quite helpful and
they worked me on other projects as well.

~~~
rgzn
How did you get into doing scraping contracts? I often write web automation
scripts and scrapers for gathering research data, but have never figured out a
way to get contact work.

------
trelliscoded
Anticipate their emergency procedures, and ship them a binder wrapped with
dire warnings should it be removed from the data center. Multiple customers
have said this has saved their bacon.

~~~
janci
could you please elaborate? What's in the binder?

~~~
trelliscoded
Emergency procedures for administrating the network gear. There's two
sections: 1) symptom->fix procedures, and 2) how to rebuild everything in the
network from scratch in case it got wiped.

The reason it's in hardcopy is because you can't look stuff up on the Internet
if the Internet is down.

------
elorant
Build much better UIs than my competition. It's a known issue, we developers
rarely take the time to bother with UI and it's a shame because it makes all
the difference in the world, especially in web apps. Clients can't tell
technical superiority, they can only judge from what they see and if your UI
is stellar you'll make selling a lot easier. And you know, judging from the
fact that so many of us are afraid of the sales side this could be a
lifesaver. Build better UIs to counteract the fact that you suck at sales.

~~~
omarchowdhury
Portfolio, please.

~~~
elorant
Most of my projects are subscription based SaaS web apps specifically aimed
for a local (non-US) market. Showing them wouldn’t do you any good because
you’d need an account to view the service and it would attract unwanted
attention. Contrary to the prevailing HN mentality, I prefer to fly under the
radar.

~~~
ARCarr
I think he just wants to see screenshots...

~~~
omarchowdhury
If that's all I wanted I can go to Dribbble or Behance. Was genuinely
curious...

------
neals
My rates! Seriously. That's how high they are and that's where I want them.

But because I pick up the phone when they call and I seem trustworthy, they
pay it. Also, I take my work very seriously, and they get what they pay for.

Contrary to what I read here, I put me first, my company second and the client
third. I think that in consulting, this is the only way to stay sane and
deliver on time and to spec.

------
angrymouse
I work in a large health organisation right now and the thing that seems to
blow most away is just saying yes.

I don't work in the IT department and they basically say no to everything.
Regardless of business value or difficulty.

I work in the chief executive office and numerous departments will be amazed
when I say yes... Let me look into that.

Recent example was a publicly facing, real-time waiting time tracker for the
city's A&E (as well as two walk in centres). Each solution I thought of had
compromises but they chose the one they could live with.

~~~
orly_bookz
Healthcare IT is one of the most backwards areas of IT to work in, I think, in
large part because of the legal red tape around everything clinical. So you
get a lot of people that say no automatically.

Additionally, I think you get a lot of people that don't really have an "IT
mindset." I don't know about where you work but in my neck of the woods we
have so many people in programmer positions that can't even write a three line
script. They're great at clinical stuff because they came from there (e.g.
nursing) but have no technical background...

~~~
michaelt
I have a different theory: For many IT applications you can tell users to
conform to the system's needs or take a hike. With healthcare (and some other
government type services) you don't get that option.

If I'm Amazon and you don't have a computer? Sorry, come back when you do. No
e-mail address? Sorry, come back when you have one. No credit/debit card?
Sorry, come back when you have one. Don't know your postal address? Sorry,
come back when you know it. No phone that can get SMSes? Sorry, come back when
you've got one. Don't speak any of the languages we use? Sorry, come back when
you do. Unable to pass a captcha? Sorry, come back when you can. Bad at
reading and can't navigate our site? Sorry, come back when you can. Blind and
your screen reader doesn't work with our site? Sorry, come back when you have
a different one. Child that doesn't know their own name? Sorry, come back with
a grown-up. No address because you're homeless? Sorry, come back when you've
got an address.

Companies that can decline service for such people can make many simplifying,
cost-saving assumptions in their IT systems.

If you can't decline service (Hospital, voting etc) you need to deal with such
corner cases - and combinations of several. I can understand how getting that
right would raise costs substantially.

------
chrisbennet
I don't know if these things "blow them away" but I do think they are
differentiators:

\- I bring homemade cookies to our first meeting and if the client likes them,
to subsequent meetings. The first time I did this for purely selfish reasons;
I like cookies but I'll eat the whole batch myself unless I get someone else
to "take a cholesterol bullet" for me.

\- I'm extremely honest and forthcoming. I tell them that it may sound like
I'm trying to talk them out of hiring me but what I'm actually trying to do is
make sure we're a really good fit. I tell them even the non-flattering data
about my capablities or lack thereof i.e. I've told more then one potential
client "I can _spell_ 'SQL'" when they tell me they'd like to incorporate a
data base in the product they want me to make. (But my wife is an expert and
she'll help me out.) I tell them my estimates are usually off by a factor of
4X. You know what is worse than not getting a contract? Getting a contract
where you can't make the client happy.

\- I tell them that they can probably do the job without me - and I mean it.
"Here's how I would do this. ... That part might be tricky, I can't remember
off the top of my head but I'll look it up and send you some links on this..
Buy me lunch and you can pick my brains."

\- Communicate even when there is no news or it's bad news. "I still haven't
received your hardware but I wanted to call so you'd know before you left for
the weekend. I'll call the vendor on Monday."

~~~
SXX
Looks like a good strategy to find the job you're going to enjoy, but is it
working well for you in the long run? Or you just have enough savings at bank
to not rush until you find a good position?

Since I wish to find some non-freelance job in future, but requirement of
bullshit talk scares me. And few times when I attempted to act similar to what
you posted I just bumped into a wall of misunderstanding.

~~~
chrisbennet
I'm hard wired for the "honesty thing" but started going out of my way a few
years ago after a bad experience.

I interviewed with a company for a contract and I had told them I only had 5
days of experience in technology X. They hired me and then let me go after a
week because they needed a true expert to fix something in time to ship. I
said them "I _told_ you I only had 5 days experience with technology X, why
did you hire me when you needed an expert??!"

The manager responded "We just liked you so much!"

After that experience, I would tell them [interviewers] right at the beginning
of the interview that I was going to try my best to "open my mind and let them
peek inside" and give them any data they might need to reject me. I'd tell
them, "It's going to sound like I'm trying to talk you out of hiring me but
I'm really just trying to make sure we're a good fit." Somewhere in there I'd
tell them the above story so they'd know why I was taking such an unorthodox
approach (and offer them another cookie).

I'm a freelancer with multiple clients now. I have too much work so I guess I
have the luxury of not taking jobs that aren't a good fit. That said, being so
confident that you can be radically honest with a potential client or
interviewer, also signals competency. A desperate person doesn't behave that
way.

------
justintocci
Answering the phone when it rings. Not so much old clients, but new clients
are consistently impressed with this. A lot of our competitors don't answer
and some don't even have voice mail.

~~~
fapi1974
I like this one. I'm a bit biased because I run a customer service business so
that's a big deal for us, but even I am impressed when someone just picks up.

------
fecak
Show them how to do it themselves, and teach them "why" I do things the way I
do them. I write resumes for clients and do them in Google Docs, and I invite
the client into the doc from the very start. They can actually watch (in real-
time, if so inclined) the work being done at all stages in the process.

Lots of them will ask why a certain decision was made that seemed unusual, and
sometimes the dialogue gets into some rather detailed nuances of how readers
interpret bits of information and how it's delivered. I came to resume writing
after ~20 years in recruiting, so I am able to provide insight into what the
audience for their resume is thinking.

Clients say they like the collaborative approach and appreciate that they
learn things that they can apply next time (and not have to pay for the
service again).

------
v4n4d1s
We clean devices, such as notebooks and keyboards, before returning them to
our internal customers/users.

~~~
orly_bookz
That's a very nice service but I'm not sure I'd like to do it.

When I did support for a university we very specifically could turn down items
(mostly laptops) that were too grody to work on. Most of the techs used their
own keyboards and mice regardless but still... some people are pretty abusive
to their hardware (gunk, stains, very clear food spills, etc).

Though I guess the SOP wasn't to say "ew get that out of here" but rather
"here's some wet wipes can you please wipe it down we make everyone do this"
which wasn't even remotely true.

------
barbolo
I'm partner of a B2B business.

We send cards and/or gifts on Christmas for every client. I and my partner
write all the cards. We always thank the client for being with us another year
and we ensure them we will do everything possible for the next year to be even
better.

We haven't lost a client in the past two years. We have about 30.

------
technotarek
Using web dev tools / inspector during a screen cast demo, either to modify a
style or to show a site/app's responsive behavior. Simple, I know, but it
comes off as some form of wizardry to many clients.

~~~
bshimmin
I think you want to be careful with that - you don't want to make the magic
that we do look too easy. "Can you just quickly change all the fonts on our
massive, complex site to Comic Sans? I saw you do it in the demo the other day
and it looked like a two second job..."

~~~
hoschicz
Then just explain to them, why it won't be so easy.

"Comic Sans is licensed by Microsoft and can't be used on the web" "When we
build websites, we first write it in another language and then pass it through
a program that translates it so that browsers understand it. Adding Comic Sans
would require us to make changes deep in the 'translator' program that is
supplied by a third party." "Comic Sans is cancer, see these links. Designers
all over the world hate it. If I had a site with Comic Sans on it in my
resume, I would seem very unprofessional to a lot of potential clients."

I usually explain them the problem I'm facing in non-technical terms.

Of course, and I bill my time spent doing this.

~~~
hoschicz
Ad quote 2: When I showcased it to you, I edited the code for browsers
directly.

------
ryanmarsh
Build a rudimentary CI pipeline that automatically runs some kind of test.

Don't roll your eyes. You might live in a JS filter bubble but there are a lot
of impoverished developers working in software engineering ghettos.

------
sgt
Our clients tend to be blown away by map widgets. If we showcase an
application and then bring up the embedded Google Maps view, e.g. with
different kinds of overlays, most clients are completely blown away.

------
johnnycarcin
I am in a pre-sales position so I am already typically on the clients shit
list. Unlike most of my counterparts, I have lived in the world of ops and
development and know how fun it is to get a call at 3am when something is
down. I use my past experiences to explain to the customer why I would do
things a certain way or why I think something might not be a good fit. I
listen to what the customer has to say (something many in my field seem to not
understand) and try to come up with something that fits well for THEM, not for
my bank account. I have had multiple people from various companies I have
worked with tell me that they really appreciated my honesty and I typically
get great customer satisfaction reviews, even if the project doesn't go that
well.

To me it really is as simple as don't be a dick.

------
DrNuke
As a consultant and advisor, I add value in the sense that I move my clients
forward very fast, whatever they need at the stage they are. Need strategy? We
devise a plan together. Need sales? We make calls together. Need r&d? I have a
network to rely upon. Need introductions? We have a look at the sector and
agree the approach. Need a deliverable? We have a look at capabilities and try
the shortest path to put out something for sale. Need services? We test the
market together. Blowing away = moving forward efficiently, safely and as soon
as possible. That said, the ultimate problem everywhere is sales, so just help
clients sell their sh*t and they will be happy, very happy, very very happy.

------
lowglow
Hand written christmas cards are always a big hit.

------
mattbgates
I am the web developer/web designer that usually picks up where other web
designers left off or "disappeared". They usually leave without a trace or
they leave their client with a broken website. I also take them from being
charged a fortune down to being charged a much fairer price. I know I could
probably continue to charge them a fortune, but I just don't do that to
people. I tend to go after people who are on a "shoe string" budget. I mean..
I charge them enough that I'm being paid for my time, but I am willing to work
with their budgets.

I also offer something that I find most web people don't: I offer them good
customer service. I answer my emails within 24 hours and I pick up my phone
usually when they call or I get back to them asap. I try to give them a
reasonable price and I expect payment upon delivery of my invoice.

I have just a few clients, but I've never had issues. And most of the time
that is what my clients have confirmed that I have offered that no one else
offers: customer service. It's just being extremely supportive. They want to
know that someone is there when there is a problem. There is nothing worse
than the feeling of running a business.. and knowing that you are screwed or
worse -- you have to pay someone you don't know a fortune in an emergency
situation.

------
rgbrgb
On our real estate listing / brokerage site, we have a "GET MORE INFO" button
on every property. When a user hits that they'll get an automated response
with a title report, but then our agents will follow up the same day with a
short note about the property and any additional info we can find. The human
follow up tends to be a magic moment and if our agents are able to provide
some juicy info, the customer usually sticks with us for their purchase.

------
moflome
Mobile app development - releasing a binary download (MVP) in a few days which
delivers the bulk of the clients required functionality.

Somehow, at least for (native?) mobile, the spec to implementation
transformation still seems magical to many of our clients. I personally think
it's the rapid turn around. It seems there's an expectation still that the
development will take longer and thus the reaction?

~~~
Humdeee
I do this as well. Simple, rudimentary prototypes can be made in relatively no
time flat. And it's never really that ugly anyway.

------
stunthamsterio
I spend a lot of time picking up existing and 'legacy' platforms, and it
consistently seems to impress my clients when I'm able to implement
automation, even on so called 'un-automatable' platforms.

I also think it's the ability to understand that the business and the
technical elements may not always work in lockstep, and being able to
translate the needs of one to the other.

------
justintocci
Obviously anything non-trivial. Lately i've been mixing version control with
various things that haven't gotten that feature yet.

~~~
myroon5
Could you elaborate on which various things? Interested to know

~~~
justintocci
Another was version control for bom/assembly processes. They wanted a visual
tool for showing the differences. Sort of like a diff tool, but all the files
were shown instead of just two at a time. Also, who made the changes.

~~~
_sammcf
As an engineer currently migrating decades old paper records to an entry level
ERP, this would be an amazing killer feature that would blow my non-engineer
co-workers away.

Basic version control on product data without shelling out for a massive
overkill PDM/ERP/CAD integration would make me pant with hot joy.

------
nunez
Overcommunicate. Even when things are going wrong.

~~~
timdeneau
*especially when something goes wrong

------
reubenswartz
I wouldn't say "blows them away", but apparently, customer service is
generally bad enough that these things often provoke a pleasantly surprised
reaction:

1\. Make it clear that solving their problem is paramount. Not your policies,
not getting off the phone ASAP. Sometimes it's something you can help them
with directly with your product, sometimes you can't, but just treating them
like a person you want to help instead of someone to hang up on is apparently
unusual. (This is also a good fit for a lot of the techie folks on HN.)

2\. Send a handwritten note. My handwriting is terrible, practically
illegible, but people like that I took the time to write to them with pen &
paper. Ironically, I didn't do this for a long time, because I thought it
would look cheesy, but I gave it a shot and realized I like the little bit of
gratitude it brings into my day-- that's really why I do it.

------
williamwrites
Not a developer but love technology: I began my organization skills by
deconstructing simple BASIC games when BASIC was around as a pre-teen. Now,
I'm hired to organize physical and electronic records, establish filing
systems, workflows, and make physical records match the electronic records.

Create presentations that gather audiences' attention while not taking over
from the speaker.

Desire to break into business analysis and have performed the work but not
enough to make it official.

Past life created billing reports and client bills for a law firm. That took
their THREE day billing process to less than one day on a sneakernet Access
DBMS I designed.

Have also created feasible project and organizational budgets for humanitarian
nonprofits.

Created an ad-hoc computer class for uneducated adults. Was told, "I've
learned more with you in 15 minutes than a whole week at the community
college." I purchased those computers for $4.00.

------
djmill
Onsite engineers for UAT and rapid bug fix turnaround. Most bugs reported from
customers, during UAT, are fixed by the next morning for another round of
testing. This is not always the case, but for most issues, we turn them around
in less than 12 hours and the customer is blown away.

This happens ~4 times/year for major releases.

~~~
jdmichal
Used to do the same for customer deliveries. At the beginning, it was
embarrassing to even have issues come up at all. But then we realized that
there was no way we were ever going to completely duplicate their environment,
and something would always come up. We'd have to resolved by the next day, if
not the same day. That's when you learn that customers don't care that there
are problems; they care that there are solutions and that you are there to
provide them.

------
Caerus
Documentation.

I'm a sort of internal consultant in my company who often interfaces with
external customers. I've repeatedly heard that no one else provides as
thorough yet easily understood documentation. They value the results, but
value truly understanding them and being able to follow how I got them almost
as much.

------
franze
I get marketing, developers, content-people, biz-dev, product, higher
management, middle-management ... in one room ... and after 2 days we produce
a prioritized roadmap on how to move the company forward. Plus: No dead
bodies, they actually liked beeing there.

Most of the time they can't believe it either. It's fun.

~~~
0xdeadbeefbabe
That sounds awful. How do you avoid dead bodies?

~~~
franze
establish a framework of thinking that is outside of their usual modus
operandi / way of thinking. so they are all fish out of the water ....
together.

------
caseysoftware
At my last company, when someone sent a solid bug report, made a good pull
request to our docs, or asked for swag, I'd send them some gear with a
handwritten note and my card.

People went _crazy_ about the handwritten note and got thank you notes for the
note! I think it was so different that it was a cool surprise.

------
bookofjoe
Wake them up from their general anesthetic. Never fails.

------
BjoernKW
Speaking as an independent IT consultant: Listening and trying to truly
understand the problems they have (at least I try to do that as much as
possible). Then solving those problems in perhaps unexpected ways. It might
sound a bit trite but from my experience business software development often
tends to get stuck in a rut and less than optimal or even harmful practices
are perpetuated because "it's always been done this way". Cargo cult is an
eminent problem in business IT processes that goes unchallenged far too often.

Effective knowledge transfer is another aspect. Not just coding up a solution
but teaching others how to solve specific problems by themselves is highly
valuable.

------
flarg
Requirements analysis in UML blows a lot of my clients away, it lets them see
the world in a different way for the first time. I don't think I'm great at
it, shows how rarely this is really done for large institutional customers.

------
lon124
What a great question. I find it's always the little things that do the trick!

Here are my top 2:

I have a simple motto: I aim to save my clients money. This can work in lots
of different ways, shaving a day off development here or there, coming up with
cheaper solutions, even outsourcing little tasks to UpWork or automating them
via an existing web service.

#2: At the end of each week, I like to send a quick summary email. I got that
tip from another freelancer. Even though clients have access to online project
management, it gives them additional reassurance and they go into the weekend
with a sense that you're doing good work on their behalf.

------
eli
When they send us an email, even a reply to a mass email, a real person reads
every message and follows up. Simply thing, but people are routinely
surprised.

------
MWil
Organizing their 4,000 pg VA claims files that are essentially their last 30
years of private and VA health records (usually already organized by facility
though), military service, military medical, and the VA claims process

The longer a claims file, the more I get excited because the chance of a VA
error is already very high - in a 4,000 pg file I can guarantee at least one
big one

------
ankurdhama
Ask them the questions (about the project/problem) that they never asked
themselves.

------
artpop
Tableau vizs

~~~
eb0la
DATEPART("weekday",...) is my best friend here. Usually sales, etc. on mondays
are similar to other mondays and so on...

Maybe I am overly used to this; but customers are astonished seeing that kind
of stuff...

------
the_arun
Build better products and gracefully handle every scenario. I was always blown
away by the attention to details Apple gives to its products compared to
others. For eg. Just a video on stress testing water proof behavior of Apple
watch

------
BobCat
I do bespoke personal support. I always solve their oddest problems. There's
always a way, somehow. I'm available 24/7, for those 4am calls from Singapore.
In return, they are very loyal.

Sounds like I'm bragging - maybe I am.

------
NicoJuicy
I have created an app and site where they can see when I arrive.

I have a big success rate in winning bids. I'm not a sales man, I can help
them and a proposal is discussed immediately and i just start

------
thiyag
The funniest thing I got in a package was a pair of earplugs that Moog Music
included in their Minitaur bass synthesizer's box.. I found it hilarious

------
johanneskanybal
Show that you care and build trust. If you are looking for hacks then knowing
everyones names before an important meeting is efficient.

------
babo
Listen to them. As a consultant this is the key, understand the customer first
to provide them unique, tailed answers.

------
dfederschmidt
Installing Adobe Reader.

I'll see myself out.

~~~
ohstopitu
do you install google ultron as well?

~~~
snerbles
Chromium Portable will work as Google Ultron in a pinch, the blue icon really
seals the deal.

------
JoeAltmaier
Finish on time and under budget

~~~
logicallee
all that tells me is that you're not charging enough and you're working too
hard. (KIDDING! KIDDING!!! ... or am I?)

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Oh no I'm not working too hard, that's for sure. I'm half retired by now.

And getting it done early - means they're very happy and send more work my
way. I have more work than I can do.

------
rubyfan
Consistently deliver things quickly and for less effort than competitors.

------
tonyedgecombe
Listen.

------
erkkie
Reply to their emails in an timely manner.

~~~
simonswords82
We're not setting the bar here very high are we?

~~~
jordanwallwork
It's a little thing, but it's surprising how many people don't - if you've got
a lot of work on and a someone's emailing you about something that isn't a
priority at the time it's far too easy not to bother replying immediately.
It's much better for your client if you just take 20 seconds to shoot back an
email to manage their expectations explaining that you've seen the email and
you'll aim to take a look and get them a response in the next x days/hours/etc

------
cdevs
Fix bugs in under 2 hours ...sometimes

------
jedberg
Use CloudFormation to do anything.

~~~
khebbie
Hey, you should check out Terraform ( I am not affiliated, but a happy
customer)

~~~
jedberg
I have, it's great. Both are things that customers find amazing. :)

------
samrocksc
WE DOCUMENT OUR API'S

~~~
GordonS
Not all in caps, surely?

------
petegrif
Sounds vulgar.

