A few weeks back Khoi Vinh wrote an article on his site titled “The End of Client Services” explaining his reasons for working with a startup rather than another design consulting business. It’s a great read full of interesting thoughts, but two things in particular that he says have had me thinking.
Khoi said:
“Basically, to create anything meaningful in digital media, you need to think in terms of a product, not just a story.”
and
“The most critical time for designers to be involved in a digital product is all the time, but it’s perhaps most important for them to stick around after the launch, when they can see how a real user base is using it, and then amend, refine, revise and evolve it.”
Here’s my take on these two thoughts and how they apply in my case.
First, I agree that we need to think in terms of products when it comes to digital media. Someone introduced me as a web designer at a conference last week and it ruined my day. I don’t design web sites. I’d like to think I help build digital products that enhance my clients’ business while growing their audience. More importantly, the client (regardless of industry) should look at what they do digitally this way. Gone are the days of a website being nothing more than a digital brochure. In fact, you shouldn’t even call it your website. It is, in fact, your digital product. It’s what’s helped a energy drink maker become a publisher or a local sod company automate delivery.
I also agree that it’s impossible to develop and launch and effective product when your time working on it expires. A product is a constantly evolving thing. The job does not end when you launch it. In many ways it’s just beginning because it’s the users that will ultimately guide the evolution of that product. I often lament leaving a project when our contract time is up, especially when you’ve worked with a great in-house team full of great ideas. And it often works out that the contract runs out just as we’ve had a chance to really understand the business and the audience, and most importantly, the potential.
Recently, I’ve started to do something about that. Haven’t been able to really explain why as wonderfully as Khoi did in one article, but maybe it’s because it doesn’t necessarily mean the end of client services for me. In fact, the chance to meet and work with different clients in different parts of the world is the best part of my job. What I’ve done is simply extend my services indefinitely with some clients, where I’m truly part of the team, involved in an ongoing-basis on numerous projects with the same overall goal as everyone else employed there.
If I had to visualize what I would like to achieve with my client services model it would look something like this:
The “x” axis represents the time spent with a client, from contact (short) time period to indefinite (long) time period. The “y” axis represents the kind of engagement, from developing a project at the bottom to team to helping the overall business at the top. Right now, Garcia Interactive, seems to live in the lower left quadrant of the graph, which is where most design services firms are. But, recent successes with longer term clients have me transitioning our model to the top right quadrant, which represents more of a true partnership.
For the last year, Garcia Interactive has been “employed” by Premier Marketing, a Jasper, Indiana marketing firm focused on the travel sector. Premier didn’t hire us to just build a website or redesign their collateral material. We’ve been on board as their creative team, developing digital products for them that are extensions of what they do.
One of the features of their new site is a revenue calculator where potential clients can answer a few questions and see how much revenue potential there is for them. It has been extremely popular with users and generated more leads for them. Had we just been hired to redesign their website, we would have never had the opportunity to develop something like this. Instead, as part of their team we were privy to numerous internal discussions, had access to other team members (even outside of the digital space) and were involved in many other aspects of the business. It was one of their sales associates that mentioned the revenue formula and how she used it as a sales tool.
As an ongoing relationship, we’ve also been able to implement audience measurement tools that affect not just what we do digitally but company wide with Premier. In essence, we are helping Premier Marketing’s leaders grow their company and feel like we’re part of the team, there for the next stages of that company’s evolution. It’s a great way to work and one I look forward to reproducing with more long-term client/partners.
The digital revolution of the last ten years has been incredible and the next couple of years promises to be even more exciting. Companies are going to need help navigating this fast-changing digital landscape. They need to think about audience solutions that leverage what they do best with the promise of what digital products have to offer. We’d like to be there “all the time” to help them do this.
The post Wanted: Clients as partners appeared first on Garcia Interactive: User Interface Design & Strategy.