I received a call today from a potential client. They needed a few things fixed on their website and hadn’t been able to get any kind of response from their agency.
My first thought was that maybe they were a “problem” client who complains about everything while not paying for anything.
Then he told me that they had spent $50,000 on their website and were not able to get simple things fixed in 6 months! “Did you say you spent $5,000 on your website?” I asked. He repeated “$50,000.”
Wow. $50,000 for a website and you can’t get service or even courtesy.
What’s up with that?
You might think that $50,000 is a pretty significant amount of money to spend on a website and for most businesses it actually is, but it turns out that they are a small client with a big agency.
Their agency wants to work on $250,000+ projects, so this client has issues that go unresolved for months because it’s not worth the agency’s time.
So how do you know how important your account is to your agency?
If we make the assumption that the firm has the capabilities to achieve your website goals, I think the first question to ask is what is the agency’s average project worth and then, where is your project in relation to that.
Being the firm’s biggest client almost guarantees that each and every question you have will be answered in short order.
It’s the other side of the equation that you have to worry about. If your project’s value is a little below the agency’s average project value, then you should ask the firm some hard questions about how your account will be serviced.
If your project’s value is an outlier on the low end, then that puts you at risk of not being serviced to your satisfaction. Why? The firm is too busy dealing with their most profitable clients.
It’s just the natural order of things.
I recognized this fact long ago and I never wanted this to be the case for e9digital or our clients. To counteract the natural order, we’ve set a minimum complexity for projects we undertake. For potential clients who don’t need our level of capabilities, we refer them to smaller-size developers who can give these clients the attention they need. This way we insure that the clients we undertake are serviced to the level they require.
So if you are feeling negelected by your web agency, call me.
