Mistakes are a part of business, and a part of life. Anyone who says they don’t make mistakes is not being honest with themselves or you! Some agencies you work with only focus on the good, and want to give you a “rose-colored glasses” look at everything, and tell you that everything is fine.
While it’s fantastic to look at, and emphasize the good, what about the not-so-good? What about the mistakes, slip-ups, and missed expectations?
I’ve always taken pride in the fact that 121eCommerce does things differently, and embraces mistakes we make as opportunities to learn and to grow. Quite frankly, I feel that it makes our relationships with our clients and partners better!
In this post, I’ll talk more about the three common mistakes that we make, and how we are always working to improve upon them.
Client Communications:
Dropping the ball with communications happens. We are all human and forget to respond to an email, or an important call. For me, it’s important to admit, “I made a mistake” and communicate this with our clients while resolving their issues, or answering any questions they have. I’ve instilled this same mindset into every single person on my team; you will never get a B.S. excuse for someone not responding to you or why something is taking longer than anticipated. It ties perfectly into my next point, which is being transparent.
Being Transparent:
Some agencies see transparency as a bad thing; for me that’s not at all the case. Being transparent in communications, deadlines, and costs helps establish and build a better relationship with our clients from my experience. For example, each proposal we send to our potential clients has every single line item drawn out with a cost associated with it.
Why?
To me, being able to quantify why the web build is going to cost a certain amount of money helps not only put the client’s mind at ease, but also shows that we’re not trying to nickel and dime them.
Going further on transparency, if we are taking longer than anticipated, or something unforeseen comes up during our build of a website, we’ll tell you! I don’t like making up a B.S. reason as to why it’s taking long; we’ll be honest and tell you why.
Embracing Negative Feedback:
Sometimes, no matter how much you communicate, or how transparent you are, someone will be unhappy with the end result. Any time we receive negative feedback, we take it seriously. The first step is for us to understand what happened, with the second step being, “what can we do to make things right?” All negative feedback I see as a learning opportunity, and a way we can (and will!) make things better for our clients.
At the end of the day, no agency, no matter how much they boast about their client support is perfect; ourselves included. Mistakes are bound to happen no matter who you are; it’s about how you address them that matters most.
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