How To Deliver Exceptional Client Service. Advertisement We often hear companies, including Web agencies, boast about how they provide exceptional client service. But how do they define exceptional? Consider this scenario. You are hired to design and develop a new website for a retail client. When the client hired you, they expected that you would design and develop a great website. Just Doing Your Job Vs. Nothing is wrong with “just doing your job.”
Exceptional client service is about going beyond what is realistically expected of you. In this article, I’ll detail a few of the ways that I have tried to take my own client service to the next level and deliver a better experience, starting with the most important aspect: the relationships that you establish with the clients who hire you. There is a difference between doing what you were hired to do and delivering a superheroic level of service. Creating Real Relationships Here’s a quick exercise. So, how long is your list? So, how do you start learning more about your clients? (al) Business Side of Design — Keys To Better Communication With Clients. Advertisement I recently spoke with a prospective client who started the conversation by saying that he had called us because he was unhappy with his website’s current design and development team. Questioning what about his current team he didn’t care for, I discovered that it wasn’t the company’s product or its prices — he was satisfied with the work they did for him and felt that he was charged fairly for it.
He was unhappy with their communication. Communication Breakdown Poor communication is a surefire way to damage any project or relationship, but when I dug deeper into this particular case, I realized that lack of communication was not the issue; the company provided regular updates on projects and milestones and so on. Rather, it was the words they used when giving those updates and answering questions. Communication will fail if your messages are confusing to your audience. This isn’t the first time I’ve heard this complaint from someone when discussing their Web team. (al) (il) Mistakes I've Made (And Lessons Learned Along The Way) 9 Facts Every Creative Needs to Know About Collaborative Teams. Look behind any creative success story and you’ll usually find a great team, a group of passionate people who raised each other’s game.
When thinking about productivity we often focus on the individual, yet it’s by optimizing teams that we can truly take our projects to the next level. How? One secret weapon you have is to appreciate the psychological factors that turn a group of individuals into a cohesive team unit. To help you optimize your team selection and working habits, here are nine facts that can help you get the most out of working with others: 1. One the earliest findings in social psychology was the “social facilitation” effect – the way the mere presence of other people engaged in the same task as us can boost our motivation. 2.
Everyone knows that sports teams enjoy an advantage when they compete in the familiar surroundings of their home stadium. The mere presence of other people engaged in the same task as us can boost our motivation. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. How about you? Email Templates For Web Designers And Developers (PDF, ODT, TXT) Advertisement You know how it goes: you are facing a difficult situation with a client, and you aren’t quite sure how to respond to it to navigate the conversation into a meaningful direction. This is where email templates can come in handy. This article features email templates for communicating with clients, superiors, teammates and the like. You can easily customize them. They balance firmness and tact, professionalism and friendliness.
Please note, though, that these templates are subjective. Here is a short overview of all templates: The Dreaded Price Email First, try to defer talking about price until you have all of the details. [Subject:] Answer to your question on my rates[Client’s name],My rate varies, depending on the project and its scope. Questions About The Design Brief Trust me, iron out any questions you have before the project starts. [Subject:] Some questions about the design brief[Client’s name],I appreciate your quick provision of the design brief. Declining A Project.
[Infographie] Faut-il brûler le Lean Management | Julhiet. Le Lean Management, méthode de management issu des pratiques de Toyota, s’est diffusé mondialement dans les industries et les services. Fondé sur des méthodes participatives destinées à améliorer la production, le Lean Management a permis des gains de productivité records et sauvé des usines. En dépit de ses résultats, le Lean Management a connu des critiques virulentes et des remises en cause sévères, notamment de la part des syndicats.
Alors, faut-il brûler le Lean Management ? Les experts du Lean Management de Julhiet ont préparé une infographie vous permettant de faire le point sur cette question. Les démarches de Lean Management orientées vers les gains immédiats et le «cost killing» ont dénaturé l’esprit originel du Lean. Elles ont créé de la défiance vis-à-vis de cette méthode et généré de nombreux effets pervers : effritement des effets, dialogue social conflictuel, impacts sur la santé, rigidité des processus, désengagement… Les 4 arguments des anti Lean Management :
Facturer autrement ? Jusqu’à maintenant, je facture mes prestations sur une base très classique. Je compte le nombre de jour que la prestation me prendra et je multiplie par mon tarif journalier. Ça pose un problème simple, c’est qu’en devenant expert, je passe de moins en moins de temps sur un projet. Je pourrai augmenter mon tarif journalier mais c’est valable que dans une certaine limite. Pour infos, à titre indicatif, mon tarif journalier est de 800 € HT. L’autre inconvénient c’est que mes prestations sont difficilement accessibles pour certains types de projets, d’entreprises qui ont des problématiques intéressantes, mais pas nécessairement les moyens de payer au temps passé. Qu’est ce que j’aime faire ? J’avais lu un article (dont je ne retrouve pas le lien) qui présentait le raisonnement de développeurs pour établir un devis.
D’où la question : Qu’est ce que j’aime faire ? J’aime faire : Je n’aime pas : Que je fais, qui m’amuse 5 minutes, mais faut pas exagérer. Pour les prestations à pénaliser : Au final. The 5 Most Dangerous Creativity Killers. When it comes to doing creative work, it’s important to not only look for ways to let our creativity thrive, but to also be mindful of insidious “creativity killers” that can sneak up and strangle our ability to come up with our best ideas. According to research from Harvard University, there are five main culprits that are responsible for killing our creativity.
It’s important to recognize these impediments to the creative thought process because many are insidious, and worse yet, most can be made on the managerial end, meaning we may be stifling our creative workers without even realizing it. For those of us doing creative work, we must be mindful of these deterrents of the creative process so we can continue to put out our most novel ideas. 1. Role Mismatch As Einstein said, “Everybody is a genius. 2. Although self-restriction can often boost creativity, the Harvard study shows that external restrictions are almost always a bad thing for creative thinking. 3. 4. 5.
Why Baby Boomers and Millennials Make Great Teams. Much has been written stereotyping both the millennial and baby-boomer generations, but the real insight lies in how they work together – if given the right environment. There are roughly 66 million baby-boomers in the U.S., most of whom were supposed to be retiring in the next five to ten years. But the instability of the financial system in the last decade (and its effects on personal savings and retirement accounts), along with a growing interest in doing meaningful work that has a positive impact in the world, is leading to a budding new trend for Boomers: encore careers. Championed by enterprising organizations such as Encore.org, encore careers are follow-on careers where Boomers take the skills, knowledge, and wisdom they’ve gained from decades of work and put them to use on projects that they find personally meaningful.
This means more Boomers will be sticking around in the office for years and years to come. At the core of the Millennial energy is potential. For example, compare: Growing Your Design Business. So you’ve launched your own creative business, and you’re starting to grow. That’s great! But good growth won’t just happen. Just like a junior designer starts with small projects and slowly builds her skills, a new business needs time to mature, test new ideas, and prepare itself, too. How did you gain the design chops that got you where you are today? With study, practice, and testing, I imagine. If you want to grow in a sustainable, satisfying way, then you need to pay attention to how you’re growing, not just how much.
The wrong clients#section1 As a business owner, you might assume you should serve everyone you can. The more bad clients you try to serve, the less time you have to look for good clients. But what makes a good client? They understand your value and let you remain in control of the design process as the professional.They are enjoyable to work with. Whether your clients are good or bad, you can bet that they will send you more clients just like themselves.
Five top tips to starting a successful business.