What Do You Think Of Elance’s New Client Features?

Posted on | September 22, 2007 |

Elance have announced some changes that are geared towards clients.  These are:

• Elance Call
• Elance Chat

Elance Call is a new feature that allows clients to call freelance writers directly from their profile page.  The calls are completely free of charge and allow clients to call any service provider once they have their phone number listed on their profile.  Sounds like a great idea in principle doesn’t it but I’m not that convinced.

Take for example the differences in time zones.  I’m based in Ireland and I’m not overjoyed at the prospect of having potential clients call me any time they feel like it.  What if the time difference is 8 hours+ and they end up calling me in the middle of the night.  I don’t like the idea of my children being woke in the middle of the night not to mention the fact that my husband wouldn’t be too happy either.  I’m really not too sure what to think of this new service that Elance is providing.  It might be very useful when working with a client and you can specify what times are suitable for them to call but if potential clients start calling out of the blue it could cause a lot of problems.  What do you think?

Elance Chat is the other new feature that has been launched and this gives clients instant access to you via instant messaging.  Now I am all in favor of this one and feel that it could be very beneficial.  Another plus for Elance here is that they allow you to keep your other personal and business identities private which can really help.  I have to say that I use my Yahoo instant messaging quite a lot especially when working through project details with clients.  I am also a big fan of skype and find this extremely useful too.  I haven’t tried this new system from Elance yet but I definitely will.

It looks like Elance is really pulling out all the stops to remain on top and who can blame them.  There are so many ghostwriting jobs websites cropping up that in order to stay the best Elance needs to ensure that they provide the best for both writers and clients.

I wonder what else Elance will give us in the future?

Elance, Elance Call, Elance Chat, freelance writing, ghostwriting jobs, new features for Elance users

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