Assuring Quality
Producing quality can be the most important aspect of being independent. Unless you're a cost leader (the cheapest writer on the block), you need to have a reputation for high quality work. If you skimp in this area, or rush to put out a poor product because you took on too much work, your reputation will suffer. If this happens enough, you're back to pounding the pavement.
Start by being honest about your capabilities. If you tell a prospective client that you don't know how to do something but can learn it, and have reasonable justification for your ability to learn, the client just may pay you to acquire the knowledge you need. This is good for both you and your client. Most of us respect a professional who is confident enough to admit to not knowing something.
Don't overbook your time. Easy to say, harder to do. If you have too much on your plate, quality will inevitably suffer, so keep this in mind when you're deciding whether to take on another project.
From here, your options change depending on whether you are a one-person shop or a small group. Single-person operations face the greater challenge. It's rare that you can depend on the client for adequate editing, yet many clients try to eliminate that portion of your proposal by insisting that they can do that work. You can hire an editor for low-to-medium levels of editing (grammar, punctuation, spelling, format, and even writing style), but very few outsiders can do good substantive editing. A few tips:
- Use an editor for the more mechanical aspects. Using the second pair of eyes will free you up, avoid embarrassment, and help you maintain your reputation.
- Educate and coach the client about how to edit for accuracy of content, if needed. Review sessions (covered below) are an excellent tool.
- Give yourself some time away from the material before you come back to look at it with a critical eye.
- If you have to do the editing yourself due to time, money, or availability constraints, exploit the automated features of your word processor as much as possible. Moving beyond spell-checking, you can search for instances of words you know get used wrong, use the outline feature to check for parallel structure, run a grammar checker. Do multiple passes. Read out loud, to pace yourself.
As a small shop, you have more options. For example:
- Use the peer editing process: I edit your work, you edit mine. This eliminates a lot of the ego battles that surround editing.
- Keep as many people as is feasible involved in the project. This way, your peer can do more than a style-and-format edit, since s/he knows the content.
- If you have the resources, designate someone as the established editor, keeper of the style sheets, arbiter of disputes. This is the classic setup, but is often hard to do in small shops. It might be a side job for one person, though, where another person might have the side job of new-technology leader, and so on.
Client Feedback
Both giving and getting feedback are essential to serving client needs well. Follow a few simple practices:
During projects, build in systematic checkpoints. These might include a scheduled edit pass, status meetings or reports, and the all-important review session. Use review sessions to model processes, discover holes, resolve disputes, and get everyone aligned behind the documentation effort. Don't forget to feed your clients (literally): it keeps them coming.
If, during a talk with a client, a previously unknown problem with your product surfaces, use this as a golden opportunity to improve your service right there. Be aggressive about finding out all aspects of the problem-you really want to know everything about it. Assure the client you will come up with a solution. If the atmosphere is not too tense, begin looking for solutions in the same conversation. Above all, leave the client with the impression that you want to get to the bottom of this, not gloss over their concerns.
At the end of a project, conduct a post mortem. It can be as simple as asking, "How'd I do?" and then "Anything else?" until you've heard it all. Be sure to follow that up by giving your opinions of how it went as well; if there are things the client can do to make jobs go better, you may as well mention them. If it seems warranted, you can produce a formal project report, but make sure to get client feedback too.
If you have a steady client, or on an occasional basis to all clients, you may want to conduct client surveys. As with post mortems, these can be as formal or as informal as you like. In addition to a few well-chosen "rating" questions, ask a few open-ended ones to allow your client to express specific opinions.