Most freelancers offer set services for a set fee. Or maybe they charge an hourly rate. Either way, there's an end to the deliverables we are required to send our clients. If they've hired me to design a logo, and the client has approved the artwork and paid their remaining balance, I send them the files I promised at the start. It's tidy and easy to see the beginning and end.

That's the "letter of the law", though. Did I do everything I was contracted to do? Sure. Is there more that I could do to go above and beyond? You bet. And while what that "more" is will differ from project to project, there are a few rules I follow that allow me to delight my clients. After all, freelancers invest in their future when they go above and beyond what was promised.

Client Files

I keep all client files, regardless of their importance to the project. Word documents full of content for post cards, inspirational images sent to me by the client, and text files full of notes from phone calls. All of them are important to me, and I save them indefinitely.

Client files live in a folder with their name. Inside that folder, I give each project its own sub-folder. I also include a Legal folder, as I mentioned earlier, in which I place their signed contract and any other documents that might be necessary to the relationship.

Once a project is complete, I move the client folder to my Inactive folder. When an inactive client folder has gone untouched for over a month, I move it into an Archive folder, where it's monitored by multiple backup systems:

• it's on my hard drive
• it's copied daily to an external drive
• it's copied daily to an Amazon S3 storage account
• I copy the Archive folder monthly to a small flash drive that lives in my travel bag

Why the flash drive in my bag? Because that means, even without an internet connection, I have access to every single client file I've ever touched, whether I'm home in my office or away on vacation.

I tell my clients that their files are safe with me. This builds trust, and sets me up as a partner who is here to support them, not a traveling salesman ready to move on once money has changed hands.

Be Accessible for Support

The notion of checking in with our clients leads me to one final point. It's important that we, as freelancers, be as accessible to our clients, both past and present, as possible. The end of the individual project is never the end of the relationship. We need to be careful not to communicate otherwise to our clients.

In my line of work as a designer, I frequently receive emails from clients I worked with weeks or months prior. They are often looking for help in utilizing their logo in a new or unusual situation. Sometimes they've been asked to provide their logo to a third party but don't understand the language surrounding file types and formats. In all of these situations, my goal is to make it as easy as possible to get the solution that they require.

I understand that sometimes our time deserves payment. Oftentimes freelancers can complete a simple request in a matter of minutes, as opposed to an hour or more. We need to walk that fine line between making our clients happy and making sure that they understand the value of our work. That said, taking care of a simple five-minute task for a client, at no charge, can go a very long way toward developing loyalty.

Develop a set of personalized rules to determine how you will go about taking care of simple requests. For me, any task taking longer than 15 minutes requires me to notify the client of the potential cost of their request. To be honest, though, sometimes it isn't worth my time or effort to invoice something as small as $25. Find your line, draw it in the sand, and take care of clients consistently according to that rule.

Train Them

Did you design a new Wordpress website for a client? That's awesome, and I'm sure they're happy with what you did. But you could go one extra mile and truly delight them by doing one simple thing: train them.

Set up a meeting, either in person or over a service like JoinMe, and walk them through how to use the Wordpress system. Will it take up an hour of your time? Sure, but it will also equip your client to use the thing you build for them. They won't feel abandoned by you, and they'll be a lot more likely to ask for help in the future (re-establishing contact with you, which is never a bad thing) without fear that you'll nickel-and-dime them.

Don't just send your client a folder full of logo files. Send them files organized by use-case. Label your files clearly, without random client numbers or abbreviations. When a client gets files from me, they have the name of the client, the name of the project, and the item's title all in the filename. Something like this, for a recent business card project:

"smith-bcard-front.pdf"

They'll experience a lot less frustration every time they interact with the files you sold them, and that means they'll be a lot less likely to associate you with frustrating moments. It sounds like a mind-game, but it's just good customer service.

Care for your clients long after you're done taking care of their needs.