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craeture
Community Member

How do you deal with unresponsive clients?

I have been on Upwork for almost a year now.  

I've done 11 jobs with a few long term ones. Currently my JSS is 79%.  I have been told that this is because clients often either don't end the contract or don't leave any sort  of feedback after I finish my work.

In fact most of my contracts haven't been ended by the client. 

I was also told to not end contracts myself as that's not a good idea. 

 

BUT what do you do about JSS if I can't get anyone to leave a review or end the contract. I tell my clients as a habit on the last messages of the project to leave a review after ending the contract. 

 

So far only 2 out of the 11 have. 

I take fairly long jobs lasting 2 to 4 months and I usually only do one at a time. 

 

I wanted to know if there was a way to deal with this?

 

Please do let me know.

 

Thank you.


Best,

Renuka 

2 REPLIES 2
prestonhunter
Community Member

You titled this thread "How do you deal with unresponsive clients?"


But this is not really a good description of your concern.

 

Your concern is that you have many contracts that end without a client leaving feedback.

 

First of all, you need to understand:

We previously talked much more about the negative impact of zero-feedback contracts. But in the last year or two, Upwork changed how JSS is calculated and Upwork tells us that zero-feedback contracts no longer have a negative impact on JSS.

 

But it is still a good idea to have client feedback on contracts. It looks better. If clients have been satisfied by my work, I want them to leave feedback. Their reviews and positive feedback will make my profile more appealing to potential future clients.

 

So what can you do?

As soon as you have finished work on a project, then communicate briefly with the client:

"Danielle: Thank you for the opportunity to work on this project. I have some ideas for what I can work on next. But if you do not need me to do anything else, you can close the contract now."

Thank you! I didn't expect someone to reply so soon.

 

The thing is. I do tell my clients that. They usually tell me they would like to hire me again and leave the contract open. Often they do not hire me again, perhaps they mean to at some point but once  a few months have passed it does effect me negatively to build up an inbox of open contracts I believe. 

And the problem with me ending the contracts is that ususally zero feedback is provided.  Do you think I should end contracts myself if the client has not replied or asked more work of me in a few months? 

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