It’s always a neat feeling to read something, or talk to someone, that can reflect your feelings about a topic back at you in interesting and gratifying ways.
This morning I read a great post from Matt Linderman over at 37Signals entitled “What you expect from clients is what you will get.”
There are some great points in here about client education and the general attitude we in the client/service industry take towards our work.
It’s A Partnership
At Blue Flavor we’ve always looked at our clients as someone we need to form a relationship, or a partnership with. However it’s sometimes easy to drop into an us vs. them way of working.
In his article, Matt says:
Instead of looking down at your clients, look for ways to convince, educate, and guide them. That’s part of your job. Start off by agreeing on your common goal: to create the best final product possible.
Anyone who’s worked with someone providing a service should be able to see both sides of this. Ever worked with a wedding photographer? A mechanic? An architect? These people see the education of their clients as part of their job. Something that clients pay for.
Designers, and their clients, should see this as well. If our clients aren’t seeing it this way, we should be educating them or not accepting them as clients.
Again, it’s really easy to get wrapped up in the day-to-day production work of design. One thing I’ve been harping on lately is that we sell services not products.
Our services do have byproducts and often result in products, but we’re paid for services. It’s an important and often overlooked distinction.
We get paid for our knowledge and expertise, not our ability to push pixels. If someone hires us to push pixels, or “build a web site”, they’re probably hiring the wrong company and it’s our responsibility to let them know and walk away from the work.
This should be reflecting our feeling that design is a partnership and a process. As such it’s our job to be there to educate and help our clients understand our process and everything that goes along with it.
I’ll be honest, this isn’t something we’ve always been good at, and we still have lots of room for improvement. We’re trying…
It’s hard work.
Having a point of view and taking the time to explain it isn’t at all easy. Matt says,
Then steer them in what you think is the best direction. Take the initiative. Set expectations. Explain why you want to do it a new way. Tell them how you think the project should go.
This takes guts and vision and a willingness to be somewhat confrontational. Some clients won’t be too keen on that, but that’s ok, if they see the value of what you’re offering they should be willing to, at the very least, listen to your point of view.
And, again, it’s a partnership. This is a two way street, as designers and consultants one of our very best assets is our ability to listen. It’s key to any design or problem-solving process.
There is some risk, and no small amount of effort, to standing out and taking the time to educate and form the trust needed to carry strong ideas through. However, unless you’re in the business of pushing pixels, it’s definitely worth it. AND it will result in stronger design and better products.
I’ll leave you with one last nugget from Matt’s post.
Will this approach lose you the job? If it does, maybe it’s a bad fit in the first place.
Very true.
I just read something yesterday that I was linked to via twitter and it was something akin to (Sorry, this is a bit long):
Henry Ford was having an issue at one of his factories. As it was of utmost importance that he get this problem fixed, he called the best person money could buy: Nikola Tesla. Tesla arrived at the factory and Ford explained the issue to him.
Taking all of this information in, Tesla nodded, then walked over to one of the large boilerplates, produced a piece of chalk from his pocket and drew a big X on a spot. Ford thanked him and Tesla went on his way.
A week later, Ford received a bill from Tesla for $10,000. Dismayed, Ford asked Tesla to break down his services. Tesla, in return, sent him a register that charged $1 for drawing an X on the wall and $9,999 for knowing where to put it.
Its not the action that’s important, its the knowledge behind the action that’s important.
Also relevant, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult
I absolutely agree with you, we have been put into the pixel pusher situation a number of times. Our process has evolved to include client education from the beginning which has helped tremendously to avoid this situation.
Recently though we found a client just didn’t get it, even after numerous educational meetings. We heard the dreaded, “It isn’t what I was envisioning, but then again I don’t know what I was envisioning” from the client. So we decided to throw back up our work and gave and basically said trust our expertise or were done here. It was really empowering, but I wish we never had to get there to begin with. Either way it still beats becoming the pixel pusher… great article!
Great article.
For a freelance and self employed designer it is often frustrating to not being able to discuss client issues with colleagues.
Thanks very much for sharing.