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TL;DR
- Winning clients is great, but keeping clients is crucial to a successful business
- To keep clients, make sure they’re heard and provide the service they actually need
- If we launch a buggy product, we look bad, but we make our client look worse
- No one wants to work with a company that makes them look bad.
- Kill the bugs. Keep the clients.
Internet Explorer Could Make or Break You
Back in 2009, I was working for a small web agency managing some big projects for Coca-Cola. It was a funny time. Flash ruled the web, the Black Eyed Peas somehow spent 26 weeks on top of the Billboard 100, and about 60% of web traffic went through Internet Explorer.
At the time, I.E. was up to version 8.0 but our clients at Coke were limited to, version…. Wait for it… 6.0.
SIX POINT OH!
That came out eight. years. earlier, in 2001. Fergie hadn’t even joined the Black Eyed Peas yet.
Internet Explorer (especially early versions) was notorious for unique bugs. Something that worked perfectly in other browsers had all types of quirks in Internet Explorer. It seemed that, no matter how well we thought we tested, there’d be an inevitable stream of bugs to be reported by our client within minutes of launching something. Our stakeholders would have already tested, but due to the weirdness of I.E., the reported issues typically followed this format:
“A very important VP of something-or-another was looking at the new site and it started doing this horrible thing that made all of us look really bad and we need to fix it immediately”.
Wow, those emails hurt.
We were excited about our new launch, and wanted them to be excited too. Instead, we’d be in an excitement deficit pretty much as soon as we launched – and we’d have to dig ourselves out.
What does this have to do with client management?
Account Management is a role at an agency, but everyone in the company participates in Client Management.
Clients are people too and want the same things we all want:
- They want to feel safe (Read: Vendors they can depend on.)
- They want less stress (Read: Predictability is good. Fires are bad.)
- They want to look good (Read: Help them succeed)
But when your client finds bugs in a newly launched digital product or website, you’re poking at all the things they want to feel good about.
- You’re saying that they cannot depend on you
- You’re introducing fires into their world that they will need to put out
- You’re making them look bad
In short, you’re making their day harder.
Think of your reputation with your client as a meter that starts at neutral and can either go positive or negative.
When you launch something buggy and make their day harder, you’re taking some points away from the client relationship. How much it negatively affects the relationship will depend on how impactful the bugs are, how long the relationship has been in place, how many eyeballs are seeing it, etc. But we want to avoid any movement to the negative side of the meter; even a few negative points is too many.
That’s not to say it’s insurmountable, of course, but our goal is to build long and productive relationships with our clients. To do so, we need to consistently deliver, instill trust, and demonstrate value.
Let’s double check the math on this…
We can and do invest in client management through traditional and non-traditional means. But part of that strategy is to avoid moving our relationship in the negative direction. Any step in the negative direction just means additional steps in the positive direction to get where you want to go.
Quality Assurance Testing is something that is baked into the process. We have to do it. If there are 100 bugs to find and remediate, why not invest QA time to address those issues before they become a bigger problem for your client and you.
If you find and fix all 100 bugs before delivery, your whole team looks capable, your client looks good by delivering on their initiatives, their customers get what they need, and everybodys’ managers are happy.
If you only find 75 of the bugs before launch, then there are 25 bugs that will be found later. You’ll still need to spend the time to fix them, so you’re not saving money. But now your team looks incapable, your client looks bad, their customers are frustrated, and everybody has to answer to a manager who wants to know where things went wrong.
The next thing they’ll want to know is how to avoid it in the future, and the most obvious answer will be “Don’t use that vendor again”.
Every bug is a papercut and you never know how many paper cuts it will take to kill your relationship.
In short, just do it right the first time.
More in this Series
- Do Great Work and Be Great to Work With
- Quality Assurance is the Cheapest Form of Account Management
- Gas Caps & Product Design
- Critical Thinking is Great, but What Does it Actually Mean?
- Why We Don’t Have Account Managers
- Project Managers Aren’t Paper Pushers: Provide Value and Perspective
- What We Can All Learn From a Good Real Estate Tour
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