November 17, 2007
Posted by bretvh
I own a creative agency and we have a handful of clients whose poor planning is often impacting is in the form of rush jobs. Not only do the rush jobs push back our other client projects, but they stress out our staff (often unnecessarily) and snowball from "a couple things" to several mini projects with several rounds of revisions.
We'd like to institute a rush rate, but my question is, what criteria should we use to determine something is rushed? Less than week of lead time? Less than three days? Anything that requires us to bump another project?
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November 17, 2007
Posted by IceNineJon
( 4 ratings )
How important are these clients to your business (would you be able to survive without them)? There's often a mentality in the client service industry that the agency must do whatever the client wants, even if it's unrealistic. I've worked on both sides (at an agency for 4 years and now at a company that employs a lot of agencies) and can tell you that if a client is consistently difficult to work with, it may not be worth your time. Is it really worth rushing (and therefore potentially compromising the quality of your work and your staff's morale) to meet these clients needs? Maybe it is...you know that better than me but in the end, your clients should be partners, not adversaries when it comes to the projects you work on for them.
My advise is to let your clients know that you need at least two weeks lead time before you can spin up a new project. Clients who want to start sooner will have to pay a predetermined rush fee and you retain the right to turn down the project.
I would advise against ever taking a new project that would endanger an existing project no matter what the project's budget or rush fee is.
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November 18, 2007
Posted by bahellman
( 3 ratings )
At some point, an agency needs to take the stand that they can't accept rush projects. Rush projects place the team under extreme pressure. More importantly, rush projects set your team up for failure.
While your team is working around the clock to please the client by helping them out, you end up either making a poor product, missing deadlines, or giving the client a false sense of security that ends up destroying any future relationship with the client.
I've previously worked at an agency where we used to bend over backwards to meet a clients rush project requests. I'd say that more than 70% of these projects ended badly. As demand at the agency grew, the company started to take a stronger stand against not accepting rush projects. The agency learned how to push back, which in the end did more good for both the agency and the client.
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