I’ve found myself in the position of explaining how we work in our industry and the nature of often interfacing remotely on a project. As we’ve expanded as a company we’ve exapnded our reach and remote clients have become the majority of our work.
Essentially what it means to work with a company like us is this: the majority of the time our clients are all over the globe and thus we rely on video over web to communicate and make progress the project. Along with the nature of our industry we have the luxury of often working from home. I often point to my briefcase and joke that it is my futuristic portable office. Sure the idea of working remotely and the freedom to do that anywhere sounds romantic, but let me assure you it has its drawbacks. As a company though, we’ve worked with clients from the U.S. to Europe, to Australia and many of those productive collaborative client meetings happened while addressing a board of members from my living room.
Operation Control! (from the living room sofa?)
The conversation often comes with a laugh or two about comical side of business professional over a web camera. I know what you’re thinking… “Are you wearing pants in this google hangout to pitch a new design strategy?!”… the answer is yes! (maybe)… We can look at it under a joking light, but we do emphasize and express our intent to maintain the business professional atmosphere and utilize these types of communication tools as an essentially tool for us to extend our services globally.
Have a meeting any time anywhere?!
The irony behind it is that in the end we’ve found it to be a preferred method of communication for clients none-the-less. Even some ‘local’ clients have chosen to use video chat services to interface about their projects over in person meetings that often require drive time, etc. Its been great having an option that saves either us or the client valuable time and energy.
How Impersonal Right?!
WRONG!
Seriously, after relying on this for some years now (especially for overseas communication). It is wonderful! We LOVE to meet face to face with our clients when we can, and we’ll take advantage of any opportunity to do so. We take our projects very personally and really believe each client we work with to be a partner of our own. But the convenience of firing up a meeting anytime from anywhere is a valuable asset to the fast paced nature of how we work.
A Nationally Distributed Creative Web Agency
In the end it is necessary for a nationally distributed agency such as ourselves to function. We’re a U.S. based creative agency with a web and branding focus. We pride ourselves on earning some bright talents that we wouldn’t have the pleasure of working with if we restricted ourselves to local resources. On that note we wouldn’t have the pleasure of working with some of the client names we have if we limited our scope to working with locals only.