The client experience
User experience is all the rage. First impressions, consistent quality, matching online with offline, all that good stuff. Every year the same design conferences are full of the same talks. The slides might get shinier each year, but it’s the same guys making the same comparisons. Zunes with iPods, and Zappos with Walmart. The beloved sages take to the stage to preach to their choir. “User Experience is all that matters. Look at Apple. Look at NetFlix. Look at Amazon.”
Thanks guys, we get it.
But do we really?
How do your clients feel?
At the Future of Web Design this year, Andy Budd showed a great graph of the experience of a hotel from a guests perspective. From the air conditioned lobby with fancy chandeliers, through to the mints and personalised cards on your pillow, good hoteliers are masters of experience design.
Andy drew parallels with the experiences offered by web sites & applications. No doubt heads were nodding frantically in the crowds, and frustrated experience designers everywhere shared jokes about how some clients just don’t get the importance of the user experience. I wonder though, how many of them take a critical look at their own agency. Who dares ask “What’s it like to work with me? What is the check-in/check-out process like for my clients?”
It’s a difficult question. It forces you, as a designer, to take responsibility for a lot more than you’re used to, or comfortable with. Your work doesn’t start in a moleskine and end in a browser, just like the iPod experience doesn’t start with with a ultra-white USB cable. It’s a hell of a lot more than that. Just like we tell our clients to focus on more than just the interface, we need to focus on more than just our deliverables.
Designers & developers are all too quick to tell their horror stories about the clients who ring them when their internet is down, or who bought the “SEO handbook” and then destroyed their site with hacks. It’s rare you hear a consultant stand up and say “Here is a project that really didn’t work out, and here is every mistake we made along the way“. That’s a talk I’d love to hear.
Sure, it’s tough. No one likes to admit they slipped up. We need to grow up. No agency is perfect. No designer is perfect. Mistakes are common. Mistakes are good, you learn from them. If you think you run the perfect consultancy, well, you’re in trouble. Not only aren’t you learning from your mistakes, you’re not even aware of them in the first place.
Mistakes
It’s important to take a critical look at your agency from a client perspective and ask what is the experience like? It’s time to stop drooling over iPods, Dysons and Audis and start asking hard questions. What mistakes do you make, or have you made?
Do you over promise to win jobs? Do you treat requirements gathering like a letter to Santa, rathering than a balancing of constraints? Do you smile and nod at every request? “Sure you can have podcasting! Great idea!”.
Do you create wireframes that rely heavily on the use of amazing but also non-existent photography?
Do you conveniently “forget” to include advertising in your wireframes/mock ups, so the client can’t believe how clean and clear everything is, and how great it will look?
Do you design gorgeous sites that you know won’t work with the in-house 3-column fixed-width CMS?
Do you deliver sites that look great on a MacBook Pro, in Safari, 3.1, only?
Do you leave your clients with a site they can’t maintain, held together with browser hacks and sticky tape?
Do you rush in the new project, ignoring a string of unanswered emails from the old, all because deposits are the easiest cheques to cash?
Managing Expectations
Honesty is the key to a good relationship. You have to let someone know what you expect of them, and ask what they expect of you. Do they expect you to answer their every call? Are they aware that they are not your only client? Do you expect them to give quick feedback? Are you expected to win over their colleagues and board of directors too? These things matter.
It’s not convenient to bring them up during the honeymoon period where everyone is too busy back-patting, but these questions need answers. As soon as possible. Sure you can lie, avoid the questions, withhold important information, but do realise this is no way to approach a serious relationship. You will get caught out. You will get dumped. Maybe not during the early phases when it’s all bullet points and boxes. If your halo is made of bullshit, your client will smell it eventually.
Learn from your projects
Next time you’re having a coffee and a passionate whinge about your latest project, think about the chain of events that led to where you are now. Every project you complete teaches you something about your agency, and the client experience you offer. If you’re not listening, you’ll just end up like the bad guy from Scooby Doo, on repeat. “We were all set to finish this project, and we woulda got away with it too, if it wasn’t for those pesky clients“.