In All Reality

If you’re in any sort of service profession or any type of job that deals with “the public” on a regular basis, you’ve probably developed a healthy amount of contempt for your clients. Be they in need of design service, building construction, or just a hot cup of coffee, those of us whose jobs depend on a final product tailored to our customers have a habit of labeling them all fools. Idiots. People who, frankly, don’t know what the hell they want and waste your time. We like those clients who come to us, full of understanding and respect for what we do, who want only to throw their money at us and give free reign of their project to the creative genius that drives our very existence. We dream about those clients, and despise the rest.

I’ve been fortunate (or unfortunate, if you’re a negative person) enough to have had a variety of job experiences in my relatively short life. At each firm I worked, each design or development job I had, there were a string of clients ranging from not-so-great to outright horrible. The type of people that, when they would call, I would spend several minutes “centering” myself before wrestling with them about their latest batch of nonsensical changes on their project. I became convinced that the places I worked at needed better marketing targeted at better clients; the work we were getting was awful. We were simply bottom-feeding from our prospective market, and all we were getting was crap.

What did you expect?

But something occurred to me the other day. I was going through old project files, and thinking back on the various clients I had worked with at various firms, and trying to pen down what exactly went wrong with them. That some of them were horrible people was quite obvious, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that the projects had to go bad, run over, look cheap, etc. And then it hit me: all this time I’ve been loathing these “bad” clients, but I should really be loathing myself or the company I work for.

It’s unreasonable of me to expect my clients (or my company’s clients) to come to the table knowing what they need. They may know what they want, but our job as creative service professionals is to build a rapport with our clients and guide them to what they really need. We’re as much teachers as we are designers. I can’t expect a client to know the best approach to their end goal or the best method of implementing it; if they knew that, why would they be talking to me instead of just doing it themselves? Instead, we must play the consultant as well as the producer, recommending best-practices and approaches first.

The Determining Factor

So instead of being angry at a client for throwing their own ill-informed demands into the project, I should be angry at myself for not establishing our relationship at the very beginning of our work together. The key factor here is trust. I’ve been a part of more projects than I care to remember where the process involved went something like this:

1. Meeting with client where the client tells you what they want.
2. General nods of acknowledgement from the decision-makers, affirming that we can do what they asked.
3. Meeting with the production team after the client has left, detailing out how we’re going to approach the project.
4. Project work commences. Samples, proofs, mocks, etc., are delivered to the client.
5. Client scoffs at provided samples, saying “Well, I was thinking of something more along the lines of (insert uninformed statement here).”
6. Changes are made to meet the client’s demands because we a) don’t have any sort of processes in place to deflect them and b) they’re the ones paying for it in the end anyway.
7. Resentment builds on both sides, culminating in a project that neither the client nor the producing company is truly happy with.

The key ingredient missing here is at the very beginning. The meeting with the client shouldn’t just be about what they want; it should be about what they want and how you plan to approach working with them to give them what they need. I use “want” and “need” separately on purpose, because what the client initially brings to the table is probably coated with lots of factoids that really don’t apply. What happens all too often is that we simply act as order-fillers, taking notes and then rushing to make it happen. We don’t interact and give the client a chance to trust in our judgment. “I want these colors” or “This needs to be really big on the page.” These aren’t details for the client to establish for themselves. Rather, you should establish a bond of trust with your client that says to them “Hey, I get what you need here, I really do. We’ve taken care of you and helped you out this far, trust us to take it the rest of the way and give you what is best. We’re professionals at this; it’s what we do.”

Daniel Mall likened the experience to going to your stylist/barber. You give them the big picture on what you’re going for, and rely on them to handle the rest. It’s in their best interest to give you something spectacular, a ‘do that your friends will be envious of and will compliment you perfectly. If they cut off one of your ears… that’s bad for business.

There will always be truly troublesome clients — that’s simply an unfortunate reality of any service job and it comes with the territory. But taking the extra time to really get a feel for what the client’s needs are can make all the difference in the world. Bad clients can become good clients, and good clients can become great clients. If the consultation process is structured into your business model, there’s nothing to lose by talking more with the client and building the trust integral to success -both yours and theirs. If they’re willing to take the time to sit down and discuss what they really need, then fantastic things are possible. Don’t hate your clients, because they are the monsters you make them. Instead, slow down and work with them before trying to meet their needs. It works out better in the end.

Image credit: bjearwicke