From the course: Project Management for Creative Projects

Fostering open and frequent communication

From the course: Project Management for Creative Projects

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Fostering open and frequent communication

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- Keeping your clients happy is the ultimate goal when it comes to a project's success. After all, if they're unhappy, you're going to have difficult with payment. And you're likely going to lose them as a client for future jobs. So you need to have good and open communication. The client needs to feel comfortable calling you whether this is internal or an external client, they should be comfortable reaching out to you. Don't just rely upon electronic communication, because phone communication or face-to-face meetings can really help out, and particularly, let you see more of what's going on underneath the surface. This open communication is critical. If they have a bad feeling, or they're concerned about something, they need to be able to tell you. Frequent communication is also a good idea. We discussed the in-progress reports earlier, but let them know that if they need to reach out in between, they're welcome to. Now obviously, you may have to have some constraints here, because you can't spend all your time in meetings or on the phone, but it is important that they are able to reach out. Remember, perception is reality. If the client perceives a problem or thinks that something's wrong, something is wrong. Their lack of confidence means that the project is at risk. Emotions can have a huge impact here. Creative projects can be scary. There's lots of things that are difficult to track, lots of things that are very uncertain, and if you haven't worked on a video or a photo project a lot, you may see things that you don't understand. The video may not look good until it's color corrected or the audio background issues might be bothering you. Looking at raw or unprocessed photos can be difficult to really see how it's going to turn out. So, always try to think about things from the client's point of view. How are they seeing things? This is going to help you identify potential issues, and make it easier to see what the prospective problems are. Additionally, you're going to be able to decide if the fight is worth it. This doesn't mean that you roll over on all issues. There will be times that you have to stand your ground or be firm with clients in their best interest. But not everything is worth fighting over. Remember, if the client doesn't like the project, you can always do a save as and keep another version for yourself for your demo reel. And, not every creative decision you make is going to line up with their objective. It doesn't mean that you're not good at your job, it just means that sometimes you're going to have to compromise. Lastly, remember when to choose your battles. Not everything is worth fighting over. So you're going to need to sometimes think about the overall relationship as you're deciding how you're going to respond to client communication.

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