Dealing with stakeholders who don't know how to follow up after they've provided freelancer/remote worker with feedback can be a tricky situation, but there are a few things you can do to make sure you're getting feedback from your stakeholders.

Tips

  1. Ask them how they prefer to give feedback. Some clients may want to use email, while others may prefer to leave comments on your project management platform. If a client doesn't respond to an email or message, check their project management platform and see if they've added any comments there.
  2. Send follow-up emails after they've provided feedback. This gives them an opportunity to tell you if they have additional thoughts or questions about your work, and lets you know if the project needs any additional work before it's ready for them (or before payment).
Email Example:
"Hi [stakeholder name], I just wanted to make sure everything was working well with the website design! Did you have any questions or concerns about it? Thanks so much for your help."

3. In the event that nothing happens after multiple emails, send one final message asking if there's anything else they'd like from you on this project before moving on with other work/projects."

4. Another way to deal with the problem is that makes following up easier for them. Send them an email with a link to the updated document, and make sure it's easy for them to send it back. That way, even if they don't remember what they said in their feedback, you'll be able to remind them and get their approval on the changes.

Dialogue Example

Stakeholder: Hey, I'm really excited about your proposal! But I'm having a hard time figuring out how to follow up with you, and I don't want to bother you with too many emails. How do you prefer to give feedback?

Freelancer: That's great! Thanks so much for asking. I'm not a big fan of email follow-ups myself. It can be hard to keep track of all that back-and-forth, especially if we're working on multiple projects or if I'm juggling a bunch of stakeholders at once. So my preference is for in-person meetings—either on the phone or in person at a coffee shop or something like that. That way we can just get everything out on the table and make sure we're on the same page about what's happening next.

One More Email Example

Hi [stakeholder name],

I'm reaching out to you because I haven't heard back from you in the past week, and it's been [number] days since our last conversation. I've sent a few follow-up messages, but haven't received any responses.

I want to let you know that I'm available today, tomorrow, and Friday. If you'd like to schedule a meeting on any of those days please let me know! Otherwise, we can keep our conversation open until later this week.

Thank you so much for your time as always!