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So it’s been a month since I’ve moved over to the client side. To be honest, this first month has flown by. Learning about new brands, new internal processes, new technical architecture, new product taxonomy, and new office and vendor relationships can do that. In any case, over the next few months, I’m going to reflect on what it’s like to work on the client side and some of the changes I’ve seen since moving from one side to the other. The focus of this post is the final deliverable. The final deliverable may, in actuality, not be the final deliverable, however, I’m referring instead to the end product of a specific project or series of projects. It’s the Word document, Powerpoint presentation, website, PDF, etc. an agency delivers to the client, the client reacts to, and the agency ultimately gets paid.
So what’s different about being on a the receiving end of these documents? A lot! Here are a few of the things I’ve noticed since being on the client side.
It’s all in the details
On the agency side here is what a typical project looks like:
SEO Guy: So I ran that analysis for the client. Looks like things are going pretty good, but there’s this one keyword that’s still not moving.
Client Manager: What can we do to get it moving?
SEO Guy: I have to run some more analysis, but I’m almost done with the report.
Client Manager: Well, you better hurry up. It’s due tomorrow.
SEO Guy: I’ll stay late to get it done. [12:15 am, delivers report]
Client Manager: Thanks for that report.
SEO Guy: That last chart took me 4 hours to pull together. I couldn’t get Excel to format it correctly.
Client Manager: No problem. Can you have the proofreader look it over?
Proofer: Looks good. I made a few changes.
SEO Guy: Changes look good.
Client Manager: Great. I’ll send it over this afternoon.
As the client, here is what I see:
Client Manager: Dear Jeff. Attached is the report you requested. We look forward to your questions.
See the difference? On the agency side, there are numerous people who are touching the report. Editing, re-editing, copying, updating, stressing, proofing, creating, modifying, and reviewing. On the client side, I don’t see all that. All I see if the end product and I have to make my own assumptions about where time was or was not spent. And just as it goes, even if you [the agency] spent 98% of your time on one chart or one set of data, if you forget to spell check the document before sending it over, the few typos in it may throw the entire document into question as to whether the data is valid or not.
Since I’m disconnected from the process and don’t see the late nights, weekend sessions, frantic internal calls, etc. I don’t know why the data didn’t sum correctly or that number seems off. All I can do is react to what I’m given and if all I’m shown is a poorly written document, confusing data sets, typo laden paragraphs, or unusable charts, what am I supposed to think?
So I’m not saying, if you’re on the agency side to double your proofing efforts or throw out your current process in favor of something completely Machiavellian. I’m just saying that the next time you get a question from the client or they point out something grammatically incorrect with your introduction paragraph, just know that it’s because they are seperated from the process and don’t see all the minutia that goes into the creation of the final deliverable. And yes, we do appreciate your work, even if you used “they’re” instead of “their” or “it’s” instead of “its”.
