How do you teach your customer that they don't know your specialty?

Question

You and I want to be the expert on computer programming or website design, but sometimes a customer would rather try their hand at your specialty than concentrate on real estate sales, marketing, or being a former member of the Israeli army. Then we have a choice: either figure out how to tell the prickly customer their logo would NOT be better spinning in 3-d with a righteous lens flare, or perhaps suffer the small indignity of making link texts as verbose as possible in direct opposition to any style guide ever written.

Have you been able to convince your customers to focus on whatever it is they are trained to do so they will let you execute your technical skill to the best of your ability?

Answer 1

I always try to point my clients in the right direction with regard to design. Sometimes it's just not possible though; they want something that's dreadful design, but they're convinced it's essential to their system. If they're unconvinced after a modest pitch, I just do what they want. They are, after all, the ones paying me (usually) thousands of dollars to build to their spec.

Answer 2

The problem with customers is that they are the customer. They have hired you to do a project to their specifications. What they seem to have missed in your example is that they have hired you because of your experience. You need to remind them of that fact in a gentle way. Perhaps a story such as "At one client, we used a logo like that and they expereinced a drop in traffic. Once we switched to a flat icon the traffic returned." Doesn't have to be true, per se, but you need to sell it.

Answer 3

Knowledge is power. When you know a client is doing something wrong, have the facts ready as to why and present them quickly and in plain english. You need to remind them why they hired you in the first place.

Bearing that in mind, sometimes clients insist on shooting themselves in the foot. Have backups ready, use version control, but most of all: don't antagonize them. Your reputation is worth a lot more than their 3d-logo-spinny site.

Answer 4

Very carefully.

You've got several conflicting issues here: you want to keep the relationship (and the revenue), you want to do good work, and you don't want to end up with your name on a turkey.

Start by asking lots of questions about the business aspect: what do you want it to do, who do you want to reach, what impression do you want to give. Sometimes that will let you turn the discussion to more useful topics.

If that doesn't work, sometimes it helps to mock up the customer's idea and your idea, and compare them; if yours is clearly superior, they may see it.

If not, sometimes you have to remember that contracting/consulting is a form of prostitution; you do what the customer wants, whether it's your favorite thing or not.

The other thing to remember is a lesson I got from another consultant years ago: some customers aren't worth the trouble. he recommended that once you have enough business to live, you make a practice of firing your least liked 10 percent of the customers. Over time you develop a customer base that you can work with, and give the turkeys to someone else.

Answer 5

All you can do it explain to your customer that they hired you for your expertise in design, but at the end of the day, the customer is always right.

If you find you don't enjoy working for customers like that, simply state at the beginning of a new project that you require complete creative control. If they still want rotating logos, then you'll have to put up with it for that project but at least you can decline any offers from the same customer in the future.

Answer 6

The trick is to get them to make the right decisions, but think it's their idea. :-)

You can't have this conversation with them easily in the abstract, but you can drill down and guide them towards the side of righteousness on each individual decision. Eventually, after you've been through this a few times, they'll start to trust you.

If possible, it helps to wait a day. Tomorrow they may be less clear on exactly what they asked for. (Do they really have their heart set on a flaming logo, or was it just a whim?) Then, in your response, you: describe what you recommend, and why. Restate agreed-upon objectives, and show how the solution meets the objectives. And make it sound like it was their idea. ("The point you made yesterday about xxx is really excellent, and I think that suggests a yyy solution.")

At this point you have a choice. You can ideally pretend you never heard their silly suggestion. Or if you feel you have to, respond to it tactfully and explain costs. ("I'm a bit concerned about the animated logo idea, because it may not convey the brand image the way you requested. Of course if you want to go this route, we certainly can--in which case I'd suggest we get our graphic design consultant involved. Let me know if you want to explore this further and get a quote from the consultant for his services.")

Answer 7

Often the reason the client wants to get involved is they are concerned consciously or unconsciously you don't understand the details of their business or how they do it.

The best approach is to work with the client to learn their business. This involves zero assumptions and learning the "how they do it" of their business. From that, discover all the data they use, what states the data sits in at what point in their process.

Keep taking it back to them and eventually they will realize that not only do you understand their stuff, what they want, and what direction they want to go in, but that you might even know the implications or impacts better than them.

After this they will usually stay out of your hair. This can be hard though when working with micromanaging types, or engineers. By nature they want to know how everythign works which is great. The timing of when it's best to learn how it works is the tough part.

Often you can get stuck in more conversing about solving a problem than it would take to just fix it. Maybe you can tell us more about the client's personality.

Answer 8

I found that customers are always easier to convince by "optical evidence" than by theoretical arguments - so you could e.g. show them logos or the general style used on websites which won a price for their usability, or maybe even show them how some big competitor is doing it, and then point out the benefits based on what they see.

I've also once managed to get rid of a really terrible user interface suggestion by making screen mock-ups of how this feature would actually look and work - and I made sure to make thes mock-up as unappealing as possible ;-) When I presented them, the client quickly realized that there were better ways of achieving his goal.