When client requests are coming in from all angles, things can get overwhelming, to say the least. In order to filter out “pie in the sky” ideas while still acknowledging the requests from the company you are working with, there are several processes you should get in tune with. Here at Trinity Web Media, we always do our best to respect our clients’ requests and respond to them promptly. One of the ways to ensure we keep on track with requests is by implementing a ticketing system.
There are a variety of different ticketing systems out there, but we tend to side with GitHub. By permitting the higher-ups in a company to make requests, those lower on the chain can have a dialogue before it reaches us. This way, when we hop on a new task, we know it’s going to be the real deal.
Listen in to this week’s Trinity Web Minute episode to learn more about the best ways to handle client requests. Remember, always avoid over-engineering a solution that may already be out there.
[Transcript]
Hey everyone, thanks for checking out another bonus episode of the New Marketing Show, catching us on YouTube, Instagram TV, all that great stuff. So today, I want to talk about how do you handle client requests? And how do you handle client requests when there’s like a multiple chain? So I responded to a friend on Twitter, about how can she go ahead and filter out requests that are sort of pie in the sky things that come from higher above her clients within an organization.
So let me paint the picture for you. You have a board of directors, let’s say, who want a website or want your marketing to do X, Y, and Z. But you weren’t your direct client, the one that you work with? Is the communications manager, or let’s say, in this case, the Vice President of Marketing, how do you go ahead and honor the requests? Like? How do you go ahead and honor the requests of the board, and make sure that they’re being heard, along with doing the best thing for the client, and the best thing for the project and the best thing to achieve results.
One of the things that we like to do is, we like to go ahead and use some sort of a ticketing system. So there are a lot of different methods to do this, we give everybody access to the ticketing system. Now, when something somebody comes when something comes from the higher ups, the boards will allow our client to respond to it first, before it becomes something that actually gets to our to do list and, you know, within our scope and our checklist.
So this way, what happens is there’s a dialogue, the benefit is we’re privy to the dialogue. And we have some, we start to understand the inner workings of the organization of why it’s important what the requests are, and how they want to handled will then allow, our client will continue to empower our client to do their job to make sure that they’re going ahead and responding. And then all of a sudden, we get the request. And it’s typically a real world thing at that time. So it works really well.
The two that we use is probably one of the simplest, is we use GitHub, and we use Git issues for this. Now, I know technically, a request is not an issue. So let’s not get hung up on the semantics, but the ticketing system and the board, and the document and dialogue is amazing. There are other ways to do this. So before you jump on me, there are other ways to do it.
There are things like Zendesk, there are things like Asana, or Basecamp, where you can do this, we have just found that GitHub allows us to provide a solution that’s not over engineered, that’s sort of out of the box that we can customize to our use case, and make sure that everybody’s heard.
If you’re having this trouble with communication, first of all, you have to honor what the board and what the sea level wants and what their ideas are. But but in you, you honoring them, it’s not necessarily your job to entertain those. So what you want to do is you want to make sure you empower your client to continue the dialogue with their higher ups. And then by the time it gets you, it’s typically everything will usually make a little bit more sense.
So hey, I hope this helps you. We definitely appreciate you following us on YouTube, Instagram, all that great stuff and we’ll talk soon.
I have hired Greg and the Trinity team multiple times for work on my own websites, and have also hired them to work on behalf of multiple clients. He is simply a pleasure to work with, in every respect. Smart but without the giant ego of some developers, Trinity Web Media works with his clients to achieve their vision in the best way possible — with careful attention to their interests, and thoughtful recommendations based on his expertise. • Susan Baier – Founding Marketing Strategist – Audience Audit