Losing Clients
Losing clients is not fun. I’ve lost a few in my day. Though the remainder of my clients have come back to me and are very satisfied, you will find clients that are just not a good fit. It doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with you and the way you do business and it doesn’t mean that there’s anything wrong with the client. Sometimes you’re just not able to meet their specific needs. Other times you don’t see eye to eye on a project. Sometimes the relationship can be salvaged and sometimes it can’t.
I acquired a client right around Christmas that I was a little iffy about. This client is very responsible in paying their fee very quickly. They were a little short and cold in the e-mails I got right from the start, but I just chalked that up to personality. Now as I’ve stated earlier, I increase my fees for bad quality audio. I had two separate files that were recorded in the same place by the same person. A lot of the file contained mumbling, reverberation, things that interfered with being able to hear the audio. When I tell someone this (and I have had to a few times), they get very defensive, tell me to forget about it, that they can hear it just fine.
Here’s the kicker for everyone who hasn’t done transcription. We don’t transcribe at the same speed as the speaker is speaking. We slow it down with software. There have been times where I have had to really toil away at something by keeping it at 100% speed, but it was stop and start and still very difficult and time-consuming. Hence the reason we charge more for poor audio quality. Yet there are times where slowing it down makes it impossible to hear and keeping it at normal speed does nothing to help. I’ve got a filter for background noise built into my software and it doesn’t help on really bad audio. I have a volume booster, also. Sometimes it doesn’t help.
When I have tried every option to make it easier to hear the audio and it’s still full of inaudible parts, I just have to throw the towel in or increase the fee. That simple. If I lose clients over it, then maybe it’s for the best. I used to fret about it and worry for days and take it personally. Now I just wish the client luck with finding someone who can accommodate them better than I was able to. I have to constantly remind myself and others that it’s only me doing this stuff, not a whole big team. I’ve never claimed to be Wonder Woman and won’t start now.
So next time you lose a client, chalk it up to what it realistically is. Don’t take it personally. You never know how many other people they’ve dropped for the same reason. Some people just ask for more than what we can give them.
Thanks for reading!
