How to Ask Clients for Feedback as a Freelance Proofreader

It’s useful for freelance proofreaders to know how to ask clients for feedback. You can use this to identify your strengths and weaknesses. And positive feedback can make for great testimonials, helping you to promote your services. But how should you ask for feedback?

In this post, we offer a few tips on asking for feedback as a freelance proofreader.

Why Ask for Feedback?

It rarely hurts to ask for feedback. Sure, someone you did one small, basic proofreading job for is unlikely to have much to say about your services either way. But for any larger job, or any regular client, you can learn a lot by asking them for their perspective:

• Positive feedback will help you spot the strong elements of your working practice. You can then use this to reinforce good habits and processes. Alternatively, you can ask happy clients whether you can use their comments in testimonials.
• Negative feedback will let you identify things you can improve on, helping you to grow as a proofreader and eliminate bad habits from your work.

Positive or negative, then, all feedback is potentially valuable. But how should you ask for it? And what should you ask? Let’s look at these questions next.

How to Ask for Feedback as a Freelancer

When you ask for feedback, you’re asking for a favor from someone who has already paid you for your service. So, it’s important to make this process simple for the client.

The best way to do this is by sending clients a feedback form once the work is finished and you’ve received payment. Some basic questions you might want to ask include:

• Why did you choose me to work on your document?
• How would you rate the service? And why?
• Is there anything I could do to improve my service? If so, what?
• Would you recommend my service to others?

You can also add more specific questions related to your services if required. Make sure not to overdo it, though! Clients are usually happy to respond to a handful of questions on a feedback form, but adding too many will put people off from responding.

Once you’ve received feedback, thank the client. If you have any follow-up questions based on the initial responses, moreover, you can ask via email. As above, though, make sure not to hassle the client for answers or you could undermine your hard work so far!

Nurturing Good Client Relationships

As a final note, don’t forget that feedback won’t only reflect the work you do on documents! It will also reflect your relationship and communication with the client up to that point.

This feedback is valuable as it will help you build better relationships with clients going forward. And this, in turn, will make them more receptive to offering feedback.

In addition, a good client relationship will usually end up in better feedback! As such, this is a very valuable precursor to asking for feedback if you want to use it as a testimonial.

Learn to Proofread

Our Becoming A Proofreader course covers everything you need to start a freelance proofreading career. And with a free taster available, there’s no reason not to try it today!