Handling Clients and After Service

 

The true professional knows how to conduct business, including the art of negotiation, providing necessary information, and making agreements for each job.

The importance of negotiation is important. You should sound confident and definite. You won't impress anyone if you hem and haw when asked questions about price or terms of delivery. Know your rates by heart, know your hardware and software by heart, and know what you can do. Give this information freely and firmly, and then watch and wait. Remember, the heart of negotiation is compromise; if the client doesn't like your terms, they'll make a counter offer. Then it's up to you to accept or make yet another counter offer.

One word of advice about negotiation: dickering and bickering is not the way to cultivate clients. Often a slightly lower rate in the short run leads to more work and higher rates in the future. If you provide quality work at a fair price, you will have clients.

Providing information is an essential part of being a professional translator. Clients have to know who you are, where you work, what you can do, and what you charge. When you receive a request for information from a client, be it a new client who has sent you a contractor's employment form or an old client requesting updated information give it willingly and in detail. Your clients have to know you.

You also have to be accessible. Make sure you are in your office, or at least near your phone, during the workday. Just because no one calls you in the morning doesn't mean you have the afternoon off. You should still be in your office. Sure, you're saying to yourself, that's important, but I can still go out and do things. Yes, you can. But remember that if a client can't reach you they'll send the job to someone else. At the very least, get an answering machine which lets you call in and collect your messages from another phone. Also check your email many times per day. Some clients are now sending out job offers via email and expect prompt responses.

Making agreements refers to setting the rules for each job. By rules it is meant terms which include how the job is to be done, how much you will be paid, and when and how it will be delivered. Establish all of this before you accept the job. You might even want to get the terms in writing. Just make sure you know what you are supposed to translate, what file format the client wants, when and how you are to deliver the job, and what you'll be paid for it. Accepting a job without this information is foolish and can lead to numerous problems.

 

Sometimes an agency will say that they don't really care when you finish a job, what file format you use or how you deliver it. What they mean is that they don't need it fast, they have the hardware and software to handle common file formats, and they aren't concerned with the delivery method. Regardless of their level of interest, you should establish how you are going to do the job, and then do it that way.

The phrase ‘after service’ came into existence due to the Japanese business culture and exists in one form or another all over the world. The notion that a translation job ends the moment you push the Send File button in your email software, fire off the fax, deposit the papers in an envelope is both unprofessional and irresponsible. Don't leave your home for the beach right after you finish a translation assignment; numerous things can go wrong after you send the job.

What can possibly happen that requires my involvement? You ask. Here's the list: the agency's fax machine doesn't print your transmission clearly enough (this happens often when sending hand-written work, such as an editing job); the BBS or FTP site doesn't receive the modem transmission; the agency can't open or convert your file; the agency opens your file but gets mere gibberish (affectionately known among hackers as baud barf); the agency loses your file; or the agency has questions about what you did.

You have to stick around after you send the job, just in case. If you know you are going out (or away for the weekend), tell the agency beforehand, preferably when you deliver the job. Make sure they know you won't be around after a particular hour and ask them to confirm that the file you sent was received and can be processed. It takes a little more effort but is well worth it; the agency will love you.

Professionals solve problems. This also means that you should try to help your clients with problems. I have helped numerous clients troubleshoot a computer network, BBS, or software incompatibility over the phone while negotiating or discussing a job. Always be useful and helpful; it will make them remember you and think well of you.

Translators must stand by their work. Eventually, a client will call you and tell you that your translation sucks, that their bilingual five-year-old niece could have done a better job, that a monkey has superior spelling skills. Regardless of how offended or angered you are by such claims, take the time to work through the problem with the client. Ask for specific comments, such as where the errors are, what kind they are, and how many there are. If the errors are in fact your responsibility, offer to fix them immediately at no extra charge. If the errors fall into that nebulous area of style or proofreading, offer to participate in the clean-up process but stand by your work if you did what you were told. The most important thing is to service the client. They have the work and the money, so it behoves you to make a positive impression no matter how negative the situation might be.

Even after the job is finished and the agency confirms receipt of it, keep the file on your hard drive for weeks to come. Why? For one, I worked with a translation vendor which lost my translated file some five weeks after I submitted it. They were in a panic and called me, praying that I had kept the file. To their delight, I said I had it and would upload it immediately. Of course, this won't happen five years later, but five years seems to be the current statute of limitations on law suits involving translated materials as well as most other suits in which translated materials could be subpoenaed. So keep everything you translate for at least five years and remember to deduct the cost of the disks and the space used to store them.

As an aside, I recycle printed material after three to five years since completion of a job, but I retain electronic copies of all material I have ever worked on. Data storage is so cheap and efficient that deleting files seems pointless. I may not be able to open some of those files eventually, but with the right tool in the right hands the textual content could be extracted.

Upon finishing a large job such as a book or computer manual I usually send the agency a letter along with the finished translation and keep in contact with them as they edit my work and prepare it for publication. I also make clear that I am willing to remain involved in the process, that the agency may call me for clarifications on my work, such as choices about style or terminology, and that I am genuinely interested in the final outcome. It's always good business to be involved in the entire process, not just the small part of it which represents your work.

In sum, you should treat your clients like puppy dogs. They are very curious, very busy, easily distracted, always rushing from one thing to the next, and not necessarily willing or able to understand everything you ask of them or report to them. I don't mean you should not respect your clients, or that you should look down on them. Quite the opposite. Know their limitations and work with them. Don't assume they already know (much like a new owner of a puppy might do), but instead check, double-check, and then check once more. There is an aphorism in Japanese that goes: to question and ask is a moment's shame; to question and not ask is a lifetime of shame. If you fail to ask, the shame will be doubly yours, because not only will you often look and feel silly, but you may well also lose a client.

In many businesses, a visual impression is the most important. A good suit, a proper haircut, a clean shave and the other professional amenities are essential to success. Translators don't have to endure this unless they work in-house or meet with their clients in person. Instead, we have to rely on what we say, how we say it, and how we sound in order to create and maintain business relations. So good spoken English, or any other language you use professionally, a confident, polished manner, and a strong sense of professionalism in what you say is vital.

You literally cannot afford to have one of those bored, dull voices that telemarketing firms inflict on the average American daily. You can't afford to sneeze and cough throughout your business negotiations, unless desperately ill, in which case you might consider not working. Few people translate well while suffering from the flu and using powerful decongestants. You can't afford the cries of children, the yelping or chirping of pets, or the complaints of roommates in the background. Your home office has to sound like an office. Make sure it is in a quiet part of your home, away from the noise of a kitchen, garage, playroom, or workroom, and can be closed off from the rest of the house by a door. If you live alone, just keep the stereo or TV down, or have a remote with a mute button handy to turn off the volume when the phone rings.