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Welcome to Part II of how to use customer feedback to select a freelancer. This article covers how to analyse and vet customer comments, as well as how to do a simple web background check.

This article is part of a series on How to Select a Great Freelancer Online.

You can find Part 1 here.

Read the recent positive comments

Don’t just take an average rating as your guide, jump in and read customer comments. In particular, find jobs that sound like yours and see what customers had to say. Were they ecstatic or just so-so? Check the English quality in the posts, if you find recurring grammatical errors, or strangely recurring comments. Not everyone is an English major, but sometimes these little things can help you identify falsified comments, or at least suspect ones.

Customer’s Seem to Have a Positive Review Bias

Be aware that customers are often coerced, begged, cajoled by their freelancer to leave favourable comments. The freelancer may also try and use their personal relationship with the customer as leverage to ensure that ‘minor issues’ are left out of reviews. Some flippant examples…

“Look how hard we worked for you, it COST ME money to finish your work!”

“Hugh my friend, it has been an honour to work with you. I will leave excellent feedback for you. I would be privileged if you would do the same!

Why mention this? Are they bad people for trying to sway your grade? No… it’s just business. A bit of a gentle squeeze can add a few points to their average rating, and a few extra dollars in their pocket.

The point I want to make is that glossy reviews are more the norm than the exception. Average providers with charismatic ‘front men’ will have very similar high positive ratings, to technically excellent providers. You need to look very closely to see the difference.

An average quality freelancer will provide a worse experience then an excellent one; but they’ll do a better job convincing you that there were good reasons why you had trouble! The fact that there is a positive bias in customer reviews is another reason why outsourcers with bad ratings should generally be avoided.

Positive is nice, Negative is more important… Read the Negative Comments

Even if you have to dig into the distant, make the effort to find and read the negative reviews. In particular, see what customers were complaining about. Were they consistent? E.g. was every negative review about late delivery? If so, consider that by using that provider you will be carrying an increased risk of delay. Then consider your project, how important is timely delivery? This could sway your choice or provider, or cause you to take extra precautions with your planning.

Well considered, articulate, and reasonably balanced negative feedback should be considered credible. If you can find corroborating feedback (multiple negative reviews from different customer’s all saying the same thing), this should be considered extremely credible. Don’t ignore it. Consider using a different provider if the problem is a severe risk for your project. Or build extra safety checks into your project plan to control the identified risk.

Be careful not to lose perspective though, you aren’t looking for Mr Perfect, just Mr Reliable. For example, 3 complaints about being late in 100 jobs is likely to be fairly insignificant.

Read the Freelancer’s Response to Negative Reviews

Don’t forget to read the freelancer’s response to negative reviews. How did they handle it? Were they cool, professional, concise? Or did they lose it and have a rant? Did they accept any responsibility for the problem, or mention anything they did to mitigate the breakdown? I know if something goes wrong on my project, I want someone who’s going to try and fix it, rather then b!tch about who’s fault it is. These responses are a great insight into how your outsourcer will behave under pressure. Find someone who is as slick in their response to criticism as they are with their sales pitch

Dig Through Customer’s Review Histories

Is a customer credible enough that you can believe their review? Go through their past transactions on the site (usually available). Have they had many projects? Like freelancers, more reviews = more credibility, fewer reviews = less credibility. Also consider who the person has worked with. Have they worked with a range of providers or just 1 or 2? Do they normally have larger or smaller projects (compared to yours). Is it the same kind or work? How recently was their last review?

This should help you form a mental picture of the customer(s), and get a feel for their credibility. It should also help you identify strange or suspicious reviews.

Negative Nancies- Some people really are nuts

When looking at reviews, pay particular attention to customers who leave negative feedback. Look at their past history, do they leave mostly positive or mostly negative reviews? If it seems like the customer is generally negative, it may be that they are the problem not the provider. If they generally leave positive but on this occasion were negative, it could be that this is a troublesome provider.

Don’t forget though, that customer’s can be the bad guy too. It is possible that your prospective freelancer has had a couple of nutters. Irate, unreasonable, or seemingly incoherent comments can be an indication that the review should be discounted or considered less credible. If they’ve got a history of abusing other freelancers, it makes their reviews even less credible. Some people are too demanding, or out of touch with reality.

That said, if they’re had more then a few nutter customers it suggests that the outsourcer is taking a very wholesale approach to bidding (which is a concern). You want someone who is taking care to bid only on good projects with customers they can work with. Great providers will screen their customers, just like you screen them.

The Web Doesn’t Forgive or Forget. How to do a Web Background Check

This can be a bit of a long shot, but it can provide some useful information. People who do business on the web leave footprints, their customers leave footprints. We want to track down these to see if there is anything in their past that may affect our project.

To start, jump on google. Search for anything that you know about your freelancer that is likely to be unique to them. Some things to try are their:

• full name
• company name or identification number (if available)
• username on the outsourcing site
• phone numbers or email addresses
• website URLs

If you get a large number of results for any of these, narrow it down by combining several terms such as “full name company name” or adding additional terms like:

• review
• experience
• type of project (eg graphics, logos, etc,)
• customer
• used

This is not exhaustive, it’s just intended to give you some ideas. What you’re trying to find is comments or discussion out in the web-wilderness. If someone had a really bad experience with your freelancer, they may have jumped on a forum somewhere to vent and this is how you’ll find it.

That’s it for customer feedback!
This concludes our discussion on using customer feedback to select an outsourcer. It’s your most important assessment tool, but it shouldn’t be used in isolation. I’ve found that it’s more a way of excluding the unworthy then picking a winner. So, with our proverbial herd of freelancer’s thinned by customer feedback, the next article in the series will cover quality of communication. Great communication and a great feedback rating usually go hand in hand, but there are a few quirks to look out for