Understanding who is paying the bills

Understanding who is paying the bills

Stuart Horton-Stephens | 25/03/2011

There is an old ‘agency world’ saying: ‘There’s no such thing as the perfect client so you may as well just get used to them’. Actually, i just made that up, but it has some truth to it. Agency client relationships  inevitably start off well; everyone shakes hands, smiles politely, exchanges business cards and promises to behave throughout the whole relationship process. Then, ever so slowly, expectations are broken or become greyed out and cracks start to appear.

We are all human, we rule our existence through the ‘Chaos Theory’, therefore we have to expect bumps along the road. In fact, alot of decent design jobs thrive on some friction to keep the blood pumping. Having to prove oneself against the wishes of a demanding client allows for the positive ability of pushing boundaries which may not be the case if the process was too easy. And if you take pride in your design work and abilities then you should feel a desire to push these boundaries and prove the disapproving party wrong.

To cap things off, here is a list of suggestions for when a difficult situation occurs in a client relationship.

• If you receive an angry or objectionable email, DO NOT write back straight away. Think about all the possibilities of the situations’ outcomes and draft a retort first before attacking blindly.

• Try to put yourself in the seat of the client for a second. Imagine if it was your ‘baby’, you had just forked out $60,000 to see your dream come to life and things aren’t quite going to plan.

• Sometimes you have to swallow your pride and bite that bullet. Let them win. There will be other briefs.

• And occasionally i liken the client’s demands to this: ‘When you take your car in for a service, do you then argue the process by which they have fixed your machine? No’ (unless they are actually mechanically minded, then you’re screwed), and if ‘no’,  then you can argue the point about letting people do their jobs properly, which is why they came to you in the first place.

Everyone loves to whine about clients, but in the end they keep the blood pumping, the brain wired and the bills paid. I love them. (in case some of them are reading this)

tags: Web Development ,  Web Design