Some might say the biggest issue or bottom line for every business is affordability (of products or services), others may say quality or demand or exposure etc. or all of the above and so on.
I say customer relations, and more specifically whether the business actually cares about their customers/clients or JUST their money. Every business cares about money, that is after all the point of running a business, but I think an important question customers ask themselves is: “Do they actually care about me or my success and are they taking pride in their work as if it were for themselves“.
Unfortunately, I would say that about 90% of businesses couldn’t care less whether you lived or died. I take that back, because if you were dead they wouldn’t get any more money out of you ;). But, what I mean is on a human level, a business or corporation would be just as happy if you were a box on a shelf that just magically spat out money, you are a demographic and a number.
One important thing to keep in mind is the distance between the person serving you and the likely long dead founders of a company. When some kid at McDonald’s makes you a hamburger, they couldn’t care less about the McDonald’s name and the “quality” of their food. He/she is doing as little as possible to get by and not lose their job or end up getting fired anyway. They might not be spitting on every burger, but I wonder how hygienic they really keep it up from flipping burgers to mopping or reaching for the bleach bucket.
I have the unique privilege as a freelance web and graphic designer to work 1 on 1 with clients. And I say privilege because I happen to care about my clients and their success. I can say that without fluff and can back that up, because honestly, my clients success means more success for me and I have a passion for what I do, sometimes I get excited about others projects and ideas beside my own. Not always, I do build a decent amount of ongoing clients, but sometimes I come to crossroads where I part with them, not every business relationship can be profoundly enthusiastic forever, there’s a famous Lincoln quote in there somewhere ;).
I’m not a “keep my mouth shut and take the money” kind of guy, that’s not the service I offer. If a client said here’s a thousand dollars, do this… and I didn’t think it would help them in the way they thought or if it really is just a bad idea I might turn it down. Money is only a 1/3 of what makes me tick, the other 2 parts are doing something I enjoy and doing something the right way. My Dad has pretty much always been a construction worker, or jack of all trades really in the building and fixing whatever industry and he’s always had this saying:
“I don’t do windows.” – and quite literally I think he loathes doing anything with windows, he might know how to do it all, but if you’re looking for a windows guy, he aint taken your money ;)
Similarly, I’m an entrepreneur of the web and following those same principals;
“I don’t do Flash.”
I’ve fought to the death with clients about Flash intros before, because it’s not good for them, their site, business or ANYONE who visits it. I’ve never been presented with an intro that was appropriate or well received. People want to get to a site and be presented with a fast loading site that shows them a menu or search form so that they can quickly find what they’re looking for, if they want to watch a video presentation of something, they should be consciously choosing to press play.
A Flash intro is like a clown standing in front of a newspaper dispenser saying:
“Hey, boys and girls, guess what’s in the paper today!” and going on to summarize all the headlines, when really you just want to get to the sports section or weather etc. The flashy presentation only serves as a counter-productive annoyance of fluff, because like someone might walk away from the clown, they might just as easily click back and leave your site.
What point am I ultimately getting to with that rant? That even if you tell me “money’s no object, do it“. I’m probably going to say no, because that isn’t going to help you, and that’s my job, my purpose, to help you. I hope there are many other professionals that share that same mentality.
A difference in method another professional or business might inhabit is yes, yes, yes. And try to sale you everything they can think of on the top of that, it’s called the crooked mechanic. And where that might have worked all the time in the past, people are so much savvier these days, hopefully many more people can laugh at infomercials and their claims and know when they’re being had. If you care about your customers they just might care back, and that can propel your career forward more than you’d ever suspect.
Thanks for reading, Bryan
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