Honestly, it’s pretty simple, ‘relationships matter’.
The client-agency relationship is no different to any other type of relationship in that to be successful, it relies upon some core elements; mutual respect, trust, open and honest communication and commitment from both parties. These key ingredients enable optimal collaboration, productivity and creativity, but, and there is a but, to achieve this it takes time. So, how does Element78 develop long-lasting relationships with its clients from the off?
We work towards building trust from the outset. Initial conversations with you involve our CTO and co-founder, Jed Alder, digital strategist, Chris Hull and owner MD, Iain Rhodes. We believe that having meaningful conversations with key members of the Element78 team from the beginning shows our commitment to you and your project.
We’ve learnt over our twenty-year history that to deliver the best solutions for our clients, it’s much more than simply building a website. Gaining an in-depth understanding of your business; its people, its customers, its competitors, its pain points, its goals and future ambitions, form a solid basis for open and meaningful conversations and collaboration which ultimately leads to the best possible solution, be it a simple, single site to a multi-site, multi-integration platform.
It’s our job to make you feel ‘at home’ with Element78 and we ensure that you are looked after throughout your project from start to finish. It’s critical that you feel comfortable to express your thoughts and needs and facilitating this from the outset can make all the difference to a project. We ensure that there are key opportunities to provide feedback on our work, team and processes so that we can ensure you are getting the best possible service and experience from Element78.
We make sure that the right members of the team are available at key points in the project, whilst your dedicated Digital Project Manager and Account Manager are always on hand, ensuring that you are kept abreast of progress whilst remaining alert to your thoughts, concerns, needs (which can and do change) and your ultimate aspirations for the final output.
As you’d expect, after a while of doing this, we have some robust processes in place to enable the smooth running of any project. Early meetings offer up the chance to discuss our processes, your processes and to define the ways of working for the duration of the project. It is very important to get agreed processes and lines of communication in place as early as possible. Maintaining open lines of communication throughout the project lifecycle is critical and we ensure that you have continuity and support from the team working with you.
Understanding requires good listening, this is something we are very conscious of and that’s why our project lifecycle starts with a discovery phase. We know that getting clarity on the core goals of the project and the requirement specifics as early as possible is the best way for setting up the project for success and encourages confidence and trust from both parties. The more open clients can be to a collaborative approach, the more effective the process and more strongly founded the solution will be.
The in-depth findings from the preliminary discovery phase enables us to create a robust functional specification which, through multiple iterations, is refined to capture all requirements for the end product and will clearly detail what is ‘in’ and ‘out’ of scope, setting up clear goals and expectations for the delivery of the project. Clarity is key.
Your dedicated project manager is the key point of contact who will steer your project from start to finish, creating and maintaining timelines and working closely with you to plan in and coordinate key meetings, manage comms and to ensure that deadlines and budgets are met.
We are very much focused on delivering the best possible website or platform to meet both your immediate and longer-term needs and goals. As a result, it’s not uncommon for the scope of work to evolve as more stakeholders, with differing needs, become involved. We work with you to manage this and are always transparent about when a new request or requirement will impact on budget and timelines.
We have anything but a ‘one size fits all’ approach and we like to have meaningful conversations about current challenges be they; administrative, data-led, customer-led, campaign driven or organisational. We believe in working with you to find solutions that matter and will pay dividends in the future. In this respect, we don’t shy away from difficult conversations and we’re not afraid to push through the more challenging moments with you during a project. In fact, sometimes the more challenging moments provide opportunities for real collaboration and through our experience, strengthen relationships.
We believe that the best, long-lasting relationships rely upon establishing mutual respect and trust as quickly as possible and there are some key aspects such as excellent communication and effective processes that typically encourage that to happen with ease. Once these solid foundations are in place then it is possible to focus on working together with clarity and purpose with a common goal ahead.
Building a solid client-agency relationship takes time and effort from both sides, but ultimately brings success for all involved. By leveraging the strengths of both parties through open communication and continued collaboration, the best creative and most effective solutions can come to fruition.
At Element78 we believe in developing lasting, collaborative partnerships that strengthen each year, leading to evolving and up-to-date solutions that resonate with clients’ customers for years to come.
