When sending out a proposal for any of my work, I state that I offer a free month’s worth of maintenance and training on the finished site from the date of it’s completion. I do this for multiple reasons.

First, I believe it sets me apart. This is usually something that many other designers shy away from because they are afraid that it will lead to a month of continual nightmare changes from a client that should have been off their books weeks ago. I have not found this to be the case — yet. Of course, some clients have taken slight advantage of this grace period and after the one month I was happy to see either the emails stop or new invoices go out.

Second, it helps build goodwill. With the month-long grace period, the client is given the added security that they know they are not going to be left with a broken site or one that they don’t know how to use once it is done. Most updates to a site in the first month are usually small tweaks such as minor text changes or a fixing bug that didn’t initially appear during the testing phase.

Building Goodwill
Goodwill: noun; A favorably disposed attitude toward someone or something.
Goodwill is not something that comes automatically from doing good business with a client. It is something that needs to be earned. There are so many reasons to build quality goodwill between you and your clients, that its benefits cannot be overstated enough.

•Goodwill is what makes a client sing your praises to colleagues, even when they might not be in the market for a website.
•Goodwill is what makes a client work for you without any hesitation.
•Goodwill is what makes a client believe that you are the only business out there that truly understands their needs.
•Goodwill is what brings that client back to you time and time again with repeat work, regardless of your price.

Goodwill is an extremely major factor in bringing in quality referrals and repeat customers. Even though politely answering emails, doing quality work and giving a free month of maintenance make the client happy, it doesn’t necessarily create the full effect of goodwill. The unequivocal good stuff comes from the small things I do without hesitation — usually well after the month-long grace period has ended.

Examples of the “small things” that can quickly help build goodwill are…
•Installing or explaining how to install an extra Wordpress plugin for a client. It only would take a few minutes no matter which option you choose.
•Drastically cutting the price of a non-profit website for what you believe is a great cause
•Creating a blank template with “do this” comments to show a client how to quickly create new web pages for his or her site without needing to pay a designer. This type of empowerment comes with it’s obvious caveats, so choosing when to do this is key.
•Quickly changing a phone number on a client site to reflect new contact information. Any type of small fix/change like this will take you 5 minutes but endear you to your client.

There are so many “small things” that can be done to grow goodwill – there is no excuse not to. Because of the minimal extra work I put into these “small things” in I have been offered free advertising multiple times and I now get more referrals than I ever have before.

I wouldn’t chalk all my success up to the goodwill I have built up, but I do believe that it definitely has played a major part in building my small business from nothing into a successful venture.

Sourced: http://www.cagintranet.com/archive/goodwill-business/