The old adage, “the customer is always right” is of course a good business practice. But is it correct?
No, not always.
Sounds revolutionary right? Not really, hear me out.
As a web development professional, your duty is to do the right thing by your clients. You should always recommend the best course of action. You should never just rubber-stamp an idea just because it belongs to your client. Now of course, you are in business and you need to please your customers. But don’t be a sycophant. Tell them your opinion as to what they should do. Now of course if they choose to go against you, that is up to them. At that point you need to back off.
Of course you want an example of this correct?
Okay, here’s a case that illustrates what I’m talking about. I had a client who wanted to go with a custom designed, responsive WordPress web site. Now, I love building these websites. We build quite a few of these types of sites, and most of the time I think it’s a fabulous idea. But, in this case, the client was a nonprofit, just starting out with very little funding. I knew that I could save them a lot of money, and build a kick ass website using a premium theme. With several thousand available, that are responsive and very high-quality, this was a better way for them to go. As they were in a rush to get this up and running, the premium theme would be much quicker to market. The design process adds quite a bit of time, and then of course we have to build out the WordPress theme. Now, most companies would love to go with the more expensive solution and would never even suggest a cheaper alternative. But at RooSites, we have built a company based on doing the right thing, even if it costs us money in the short term. Why? Not because we’re such amazing human beings. It is a business strategy, to take a long view and build long-term relationships based on trust.
Bottom line: The adage that the customer is always right is not necessarily true. Do the right thing by them, give your recommendations and let them decide. You and your customers will profit in the long term.
Clients come to me to improve their search engine optimization, as well as their presence on social media. I of course am happy to help, that is my business after all 🙂
I always tell them I can help, but I can’t do it alone. You are the subject matter expert in your given field. I may be a thought leader in my field, but all that allows me to do is help YOU. You, the client have to put in some sweat equity if you want to be successful. I can provide you the mechanisms to improve your sites visibility with search engines and social media. I have done this for myself, I’ve done this for clients, but still there are many clients out there that want everything, just not willing to put in the time.
Now what does this mean? Well for instance social media. I can help you gain followers visibility, etc. But to do so we have to be active. To be successful in social media, you actually do have to be social. I know that sounds like common sense but you’d be surprised how many people want to do well with social media but don’t actually like being social. Work is not all about doing what we like to do, that is why they call it work.
At RooSites we often start by having people set up a schedule for work they’re going to do both with their website, and for social media. We have even started a beta test of sending reminders to people each week, to write a blog or an article for their websites. This way they can improve their search engine visibility, and do it the right way, through old-fashioned hard work and quality content. Google loves quality content. And you know what? They should. After all, that is what people are searching for, right? No ones sets out looking for the most optimized website. No, they want the best result set for the what they are querying the search engine for in the first place. So put in the hard work, the sweat equity will pay off.
But, if you aren’t willing to put in the time to improve your site or social media, do yourself a favor, delete your social media pages. Then put a note on your stale website: “We really don’t care about our site, hope you will do business with us anyway.” Hey at least you will get points for honesty.
