The ATA Chronicle - March/April 2024 - 17

efforts and concentrate more
time on translation and
editing. Some of the basic
components of this plan are
listed below.
y Define your purpose.
y Differentiate among
types of customers and
use an appropriately
targeted approach.
y Identify your best customers
and determine what makes
them your best customers.
y Ascertain how to retain
their business and expand
business from them.
y Decide when to take
what actions.
y Plan and implement
those actions.
y Follow up.
Quality, Deadlines,
and Deliverables
The single most important
factor you can control to
keep good customers coming
back is quality. Make sure
you do what's needed to
provide the best product. If
you're balancing deadlines
and quality, quality should
be the first priority. Two
months down the road,
customers will probably
not remember if you pulled
out all the stops to meet a
Tuesday deadline, but they
will absolutely remember if
a problem in that job made
their workday difficult.
Verify that you understand
what your customer expects
in terms of style, formatting,
and the level of services
you're to provide.
Deadlines are crucial.
It's inevitable that at some
point you'll have deadline
problems if you have a steady
business. You must deal with
these situations immediately
and professionally. Offer
solutions. If there is a major
crisis concerning a deadline,
be willing to collaborate in
appropriate ways to solve
the problem, even if it means
sacrificing some sleep or
rescheduling personal plans
to do so. This should only
happen once every few years,
if at all. The earlier in the
process you inform your
customer of the problem, the
easier it is for you to reach a
mutually acceptable solution.
Before you deliver
the product, review the
guidelines and instructions
you received to ensure
you've provided what the
customer expects. Make sure
to deliver the final product
to the location requested.
This may vary from contact
to contact within an
organization, so doublecheck
your paperwork. I know
of one customer contact
who was so annoyed that
certain vendors occasionally
delivered their translations
to the wrong email address
that she stopped using
some of them. Of course,
if a variety of vendors
kept sending assignments
to the wrong address, it
could be argued that the
confusion occurred due to
a failure on the customer's
part to communicate her
instructions clearly. But
whatever the reason, these
vendors ultimately lost
an existing customer over
something that could have
been easily avoided.
Work Environment
Create an environment
where you can do the best
work possible. This means
one that's ergonomically
optimized and allows you to
find what you need easily.
You should have the best
hardware, software, and
references your budget
allows. Of course, having the
best resources will mean little
if you don't schedule time for
continuing education to keep
current with your subject
matter, languages, software,
and best practices in your
profession.
Regarding software:
remember to perform regular
updates. In addition, have a
backup system that's reliable
and makes it easy to retrieve
files. Implement a strategy
for dealing with disasters
(weather-related and
otherwise), including keeping
an off-site backup and having
a timeline in place for when
you think you could feasibly
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The ATA Chronicle - March/April 2024

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