Last month we started a new blog feature about some of the more memorable statements and requests our valued clients have presented to us over the course of helping them with their website projects.
In our July e-newsletter we included that post as the very last one on the page and surprisingly enough, more people clicked on it than all 5 other articles.
This told us a few things:
1. Our clients have huge egos
2.The interaction between vendor and customer makes for interesting reading
3.These interactions need to be continually documented
In addition to being fun (and somewhat cathartic) to write about, these situations, when looked at from a high level, help teach us a lot about not only how to handle our clients more effectively, but how to manage ourselves better and provide the folks nice enough to do business with us a better experience.
I think one of the reasons so many people (the majority of which were current clients) clicked on that blog post is because on some level all of us want genuine feedback from the “other side of the table” when we’re the customer. And more importantly, I think if we got that feedback and it was honest, objective, and most of all professional, we’d all become better clients as well as vendors.
So that’s become the goal for this ongoing series of posts, because as we all know, working with, and as, clients can get a little tense sometimes. If we try to learn from our experience as both it will probably go a long way towards building better stuff and having more fun doing it.
I think it’s important to take the time to figure out what the client really means when they make certain statements or request. Because how I respond plays a huge role in keeping them happy, the project on track, and the final product looking and working like something we’re both proud of.
An unenviable task for sure, but one that makes my job so much fun. So here goes, and I’d really appreciate any feedback in the comments. If you’ve heard anything from your clients recently that would be a good addition to our next post, feel free to give me a shout and we’ll add it in.
Where are we at with the website?
This sounds like a completely valid and logical question, right? That’s because it is… until you consider the circumstances it’s most likely being asked under. The fact is, and this isn’t meant to be taken harshly, if a client doesn’t know which stage their project is in they haven’t been paying much attention to the project in the first place.
That’s because in addition to our phone calls and meetings we push out email updates on a regular basis and our staging sites are on live URLs 24/7.
So why would a client need to ask this question? The answer is simple: who cares?
As their vendor, it doesn’t matter that our client hasn’t been anxiously awaiting our every update and responding in kind. They’re the client and they paid us, so unless it’s been explicitly stated in a contract they can engage in the project when they are ready.
We’ve started incorporating a bit more organized project buildout schedule into our proposals, but the bottom line is, the client did pay us to perform this work for them. If the fact that they’re busy running their business caused them to slip a little on following the progress of their project with then so be it.
I’m not going to lie, this is a tough one to field sometimes depending on the length of time it’s been since we last asked the client for their About Us page content, but at the end of the day this is one that needs to be handled carefully as it can really compound an already complicated situation.
Now, as a cautionary tale to clients, re-engaging with a web design or development project after an extended hiatus is no easy task. Chances are, you’ll have forgotten all those wonderful ideas you were so adamant about us including for your project. Our most successful relationships are the ones where the client is involved, responsive and most of all engaged so let’s all work a little harder to make this the norm rather than the exception.
How quickly can we get this live?
This kind of ties back to the previous point, if a client asks us this question we can quickly surmise a few key facts:
1.) You haven’t been paying attention
2.) This is probably the first time we’ve heard from you in awhile
3.) As soon as you’ve paid us
We like to work with our clients to reconcile all the content for their website or application as early on in the project’s life cycle as we can. The reason is simple; it’s by far the biggest reason our projects get delayed.
Now, we can launch a website and put “Coming Soon” in the areas we don’t have content for, but aside from being terribly lame it really doesn’t do our clients justice.
That’s because when you build a website, you have the opportunity to offer people that visit it an experience that gives them their first impression of what you’re all about and everything that makes you or your company unique and valuable.
If the website has been built well, this experience will be memorable, engaging, and ultimately achieve the goals set out for it.
Quite simply, we can’t create this experience without our clients input. They know their business and industry better than we ever will, and we need that insight in order to pull off this experience and get results.
So long story short, the answer to this question is always ASAP. However, if we can take the time to figure how best to serve the people that are going to be visiting this website everybody will be better off for it.
What do you mean this will cost extra? Don’t you think the site should have it?
I’ve lost a fair amount of tooth enamel grinding my jaw to stay quiet after hearing this one. Not out of frustration mind you, but because it puts us in an awkward position.
On one hand we absolutely think all of our clients’ websites should have the best, most current bells and whistles that are out there. On the other hand, which coincidentally is the one that we use to write checks to pay our mortgages, if we gave every client the best stuff out there regardless of the budget we agreed to we’d be up the creek.
So like any dispute that ever arises with a client, our first course of action is to reason with them. In the case of this request, that usually involves an analogy. Analogies are great in our industry because a lot of what we do is foreign to most people so if we compare it to something more familiar it helps create common ground.
I remember one particular meeting where one of our larger clients asked about an additional service that wasn’t in our agreement. We went through the dog and pony show for a bit and then all of sudden the conversation went from pitching a new value-added service to defending ourselves as to why we didn’t do it already and build in the costs to the original project.
That’s when the “Well, if this is such a great idea why didn’t you do it the first time?” was finally vocalized.
Now, the answer is simple: “Because you didn’t pay for it”.
But I couldn’t just drop that response into the lap of one of our largest clients (who incidentally was already more than a little fired up).
So I replied, in a very nice way, that just because it would be a great idea to put a pool in at my house being that I live in Florida and it’s very hot, I didn’t pay for it when I built my house so they didn’t put a pool in.
It’s the same principle with a website, but because a pool is a tangible structure that most everyone innately knows is expensive to have put in your backyard, it’s easier to understand than an intangible website that has very complex functionality.
They understood and the tension was diffused with a few chuckles thrown in for good measure. The lesson to be learned here is that good, honest communication is critical to helping clients understand your services and pricing.
Most of the time when a client gets irrational or frustrated it can be traced back to a misunderstanding along the way that you didn’t properly or fully explain. It’s important to go out of your way to make sure everyone’s on the same page, because today’s minor misunderstanding can come back to bite you tomorrow.
Can’t Live with ‘em, can’t live without ‘em
This statement has been applied to all kinds of relationships but it’s especially appropriate for understanding just how valuable our clients are. We’ve changed how we do things quite a bit in the last few months and it’s resulted in a substantially better experience for us and our the folks kind enough to hire us.
Here’s a few blog posts I read recently that deal with clients and if you have any stories or thoughts you’d like to share please feel free to comment below.
Clients Say the Darndest Things #1
How to Navigate Design by Committee
No One Nos: Learning to Say No to Bad Ideas
10 statements that make my head explode, and what they really mean
