Do you want to know how to have a successful website services department? Of course you do! Many agencies and consultancy firms struggle with web services for various reasons, and many fight to be profitable at all. Having been in director level roles over web services in a few scenarios and working with a huge variety of clients, I've learned and seen success as a result.
In this video, you'll get a great inside look at my daily life with our farm animals, and using them to teach a valuable lesson.
In the video, questions are asked:
- Are your clients unsettled?
- Are they seemingly impatient or nagging?
- Are they just waiting to be fed, as in, craving some communication?
Just feed them. Feed them:
- Regular project updates
- Timely email responses
- Work that matches your promises
In the mornings, my animals are very loud and obnoxious because they're hungry and making sure that you are aware and don't forget to feed them! But after they are fed, everything gets very quiet and peaceful. They are calm and satisfied.
This relates extremely well with your web services practice!
You have to take care of your clients. You have to take care of your projects. You simply have to do what you say you're going to do. This is the basic definition of integrity, which is extremely important. If you have no integrity, then there is no value to what you bring to the table.
If you say that something will be done by a particular day and time, then make sure that it is. And if it's not going to be, for whatever reason, communicate that as soon as you know. Even if you have to tell a client that there's going to be a delay, or there is some type of issue... as long as you notify them and explain why and what you are doing about it, it is normally okay.
In most cases, everyone involved can adjust with changes. Nobody expects a website project to go 100% smooth, without any snags, because that's just not real life. So, if there is something of concern, just communicate and talk about it. Work out a plan.
If you don't do this properly, your experience will be like my loud animals in the morning where everybody's freaking out, everybody's upset, nobody knows what's going on... "where's my food?!" That's the result you will get. But when you communicate and take care of things... when you make sure things are done when and how they're supposed to be... then life is good.