Rush jobs are always a shitshow.
Rush jobs usually happen because of poor planning and organisation.
This will have a negative effect at all points in the project.
Then the client gets annoyed that you missed the deadline, even though it was THEM that stalled for 4 weeks. 🤬
Make sure when giving deadlines you highlight that the timeline is based on their feedback and adjust the timeline as you go.
Sometimes clients don’t plan ahead, leave it to the last minute, then try to force you to pick up the pieces.
The customer’s lack of planning does not make it an emergency for you.
If you don’t get information or feedback you need to proceed it delays the project,
it’s your job to make sure they know this in advance.
If they stall for 2 weeks on feedback, it pushes the timeline forwards 2 weeks.
If we let clients dictate what we work on and when, it’s a recipe for burnout.
We’ll endlessly be jumping from task to task, firefighting from our inbox as clients fire over emails with instructions whenever a new thought occurs to them.
Sometimes things come up.
If they do have a genuine rush like a product launch etc you can say something like:
“no problem, it’s a tight turnaround but we can make that deadline for you. But we’ll need to pull out all the stops, put some of our current projects on hold and do overtime to achieve that so our standard rush charge of 20% will apply. Just let me know how you’d like to proceed?”
(You can also mention unsociable hours charge if they want you working outside reasonable work hours)
clients need to remember people are people. I think people often forget that when they are at their keyboard, the person on the other end of your email is a person, not a robot they have work hours breaks, personal emergencies etc.
Nipping this stuff in the bud will force them to adjust the relationship to a more respectful one.
however needs to be done carefully, and with subtlety as they are still the ones who pay the bills haha.
The key is don’t lose your temper or get annoyed, just state facts, have emotionless template messages like the above that you can send when the client is being unreasonable.
They may not realise that this expectation is unreasonable if they aren’t aware that you have many other clients all wanting their own tasks done as quickly as possible.
So we will have to politely and calmly adjust their expectations on deadlines, by explaining “The Work Schedule”.
Use your work schedule or queue to balance workload effectively.
The client will never know what your schedule is,
But they will understand that you have to work on tasks in an order.
“I’m afraid I won’t be able to action this immediatley, as I have a few other things in the work queue before this. I’ve bumped you up the work schedule as much as I can already;
But to be fair to my other clients I must respect the work queue,
After all, you would be annoyed if I told you I hadn’t worked on your project because another client asked me to do his first!”
Note: if this is a billable task, make sure the client has paid before starting!
“I understand your in a rush so I’ll bump you up the work queue in this case.
So that I can proceed with this quickly I’ll send the invoice after this call, if you could pay that promptly it’ll allow me to move quickly on this project”
