Knowing when to say NO
by sandman6210 ~ March 2nd, 2009. Filed under: development, ramblings.
When does it come time to say to a client “NO, that is enough”?
Where is the line between “good” service & “chargeable” service? It seems that clients have a hard time determining where this boundary is, but are having no problem crossing it. What bothers me the most, is that when good service has been taken advantage of & stopped, that the client is going on to ‘bag out’ their contractor.
Too many times I am hearing how bad a previous designer was, then taking on the new contract, only to find that it was the client that was the bad one. Tweak after tweak after tweak. Page layout changes. Text rewritten. Even sometimes a whole program change because they have decided they want a shop not a gallery, a gallery not a CMS, a directory not a shop. Most times the client seems to think that this is all part of the design process.
From a designers point of view, I think that programs such as Word & any other pagemaker programs have been a thorn in our side. Clients have adopted this drag & drop mentality. Clients are not seeing page layouts as page layouts, they are things you can move around a page & it can’t be that hard to change on a whim. I have a client who has decided that they want a layout change, and can’t see what the problem is with moving things around on a page.
No one is expecting everyone to know about designing a website, that’s our [designers] job, but they are expected to listened during the production process.
Another rather difficult client didn’t think they needed keywords, Google didn’t need to find them, people would know “how” to find them. Many emails & an in-person consult later, we managed to get a bit of text & a few keywords on the website. Surprise, surprise… the client then complains that potential customers can’t find them “can we have more text?”. Yes, you can… but it WILL cost. It wasn’t quoted on, therefore it wasn’t included in the cost of the project. You can’t just go changing your mind & deciding that redoing all your text won’t take long.
EVERYTHING takes time. A 5 minute job takes time. Spending an hour talking to you on the telephone takes time. Would you go to a lawyer and not expect them to charge you for their time? No you wouldn’t. Don’t disrespect your contractor by expecting endless free services.
So what is GOOD service?
Good service is providing the client with a detailed brief of what would be required to do the best job possible on their project. Good service is explaining to the client procedures. Good service is supplying updates on milestones & expected delays. Good service is providing a product that won’t break. Good service is providing your product on time and in working order. Good service is providing follow-up service for a determined amount of time for fixing MINOR problems. Good service is NOT redoing. Good service is providing you with a quote to do additional work at a good rate because you are an existing client.
March 3rd, 2009 at 3:10 am
You are so right about the “drag and drop” mentality. I once had a potential client say “I could write a five page word document about our company in a couple of hours, so why is the web developer quoting $thousands to create a five page website?”.
There are also some people who assume that because they wheel, deal and look for ways to rip people off, everybody else does too. They don’t want to listen to explanations because they are busy trying to figure out how you are trying to trap them.
In addition to what you’ve said about good service – another part of it is learning how to identify the clients you don’t want, so you can give more time to the ones you do want. Easier said than done and I’m the first to admit I’m still learning how to do it.