Well, we are moved in. We have walls, doors, lights, and a few fun additions to the space. We thought we’d give you a peek at the progress.

To stir the pot a bit more, check out the proposed email rules by TED’s Chris Anderson who also urges you to avoid images in your signature (see #10 in his list). Does this help convince any of you who were previously against the idea?

Here are a few scenarios which have lead us to review our process in the past:

• A potential client says our proposal is too expensive. The result: we discuss ways to improve our process to help clients understand that an “e-commerce site like Amazon” can’t be built for a few thousand dollars.
• After completing a project, a client asks for changes and complains about having to pay for them. The result: we review our process to find a way to help clients understand that change orders have fees.
• A client takes months to deliver assets or content to us and then expects us to drop everything to resume work on their project. The result: we decide our process needs to set firmer controls on client responsibilities.

In these cases, and many more, we blame the process and then attempt to revise the process accordingly so that future projects won’t suffer the same issues. This isn’t inherently bad; this is a valuable, healthy method of refining the way that we work and of perfecting our service. The trouble, however, is when we fall into the trap of believing we can use process to prevent all problems.

Flawed Thinking

In reality, no process can ever account for every possible scenario.

Like us, you’ve probably seen 50-page legal documents which attempt to eliminate all risk for a transaction. Ask any attorney, however, and they’ll tell you that document is no guarantee. It may be a strong measure of protection, but it isn’t a guarantee no matter how long it is nor who created it.

Proposals, scope documents, or project contracts are no different. We’ve tried creating project documents so detailed that it seems impossible anyone could ever disagree as to the exact meaning. How did we fare? Not much better than on other projects where we spent less time trying to create a bulletproof agreement.

We’ve figured out why.

The Client is a Factor

Memorize this sentence: A good process will never fully compensate for a bad client.

It doesn’t matter how perfectly-crafted your process, a bad client will always find a loophole or cause a scenario you neither envisioned nor prepared for. To believe that the process is 100% responsible for a successful project outcome is to remove all responsibility from the client. A good process is critical, but the process can’t do it all.

With the right client, your process shouldn’t have to bear the full burden of guaranteeing the project will be problem free.

Summary

We’re by no means advocating that process is unimportant. It’s very important. The change we’re advocating is that the client be considered as part of the equation. Here’s how we’re currently working to improve in this area:

1. Our process is always in need of refinement, and we’re committed to continue working on it.
2. We believe that a good process will never fully compensate for a bad client.
3. We’re working on methods for quickly recognizing which clients we want to work with and those that aren’t a fit for us.

What do you think? Do you rely on a bulletproof process or are you more focused on being selective about who you work with? We’d love to hear your thoughts, advice, or objections in the comments below!

True, you can send an HTML email and just reference the logo’s URL so that it isn’t attached, but my overall point is that I don’t need to see your logo in every message you send. It’s probably fine to get crafty with an email message if you’re sending a note to your scrapbooking club, but this is the business world. A concise, text-only message is all I need.

I know how the decision gets made: I’ve heard plenty of conversations about how email is a form of communication and it should be rich and interactive and branded and yada yada. Some people are even including multiple images in their email signature, with links to Facebook, Twitter, etc. I’m sure the intention is good, but this is a practice that needs to stop.

Why? Email doesn’t need to be “jazzed up” in the business setting. I don’t need to see your logo every time you email me and I don’t need to see the Facebook icon in your email signature when a plain-text link would do just fine.

Worse still, in most cases images included in an email signature show up as attachments to the email message. This means I either think you’ve sent me an attachment that I need to review, only to find out it’s just your logo again, or that I have to search through the Facebook, Twitter, and company logos from your signature in order to find the one legitimate attachment that I’m supposed to look at.

Either way, I’m annoyed. And that’s probably not the brand interaction you’re hoping to have. Let’s get rid of the email signature logos.

If Steve Jobs has you all hyped-up on HTML5 and you decide you ought to know exactly what it is, check out our HTML5 blog: What is HTML5? Be sure to click the RSS link in the footer to subscribe if you want to be notified of updates.

OK, back to building cool stuff…

1. Combined SEO value: Rather than generating separate SEO value for the blog, we’ve decided to move the content to our primary domain to combine the SEO benefits.

2. Additional authors: Previously, all Agency Byte articles were written only by me. In the future, we’ll likely feature more posts from other members of the Agency Fusion team.

A blog redesign is coming soon!

Visit the Tweak CMS website to learn more about our reseller CMS!