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Quote of the Week:

What a week.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. I truly understand that opening line from that book Mrs. Zamboni made me read in high school, now. This week has been good, and really horrible.

Bad: I had jury duty on Monday. Before you all tell me what a privilege it is to serve on a jury, I will say: you are absolutely right, and I was happy to do it. The bad part is that it was on a Monday morning, when your clients are trying to make up for the lost time from Friday afternoon when we all knocked off early. But c'est la vie. I was nearly seated, but in the end didn't sit in the box. Maybe next year.

Good: met with a new prospective client, who has an excellent business plan, and asked me to maybe create some branding and web stuff for her in the nearish future. That was cool. And I found that the Daz Bog on 17th and Downing makes their coffee a lot better than other non-Daz Bog coffeehouses do (and they were just as polite as the folks at Generous Servings, which is saying a lot).

Bad: I wanted to make sure this client had a lot of options on the table, since their plans are a little in flux, so I made several variations on each proposal. This took time (that's the bad part). Happy to do it, but it was a lot of proposal writing.

Good: Prospective client loved the extra effort, and, for me, having those options on the table meant that they could make a more fully-informed decision. Clients often tell me that they've never seen such detailed proposals, which makes me warm and fuzzy inside (it also makes me wonder why no one else seems to be offering basic details like a schedule, a scope of work, licensing scope, and so on, but that's another post).

Bad: I had another proposal due on Saturday, and it's a proposal from an RFP, which I haven't done in years. Most of my projects come from organizations or businesses who approach me with a need, we talk about it, I get specifics, and I issue a proposal. This one is necessarily (due to the nature of the organization) more "official", and it took me several days to wrap my mind around it.

That in itself wasn't a bad thing; it was the fact that between all these proposals and jury duty AND (surprise reveal!) our dryer konked out, I got zero actual creative work done this week. None. Nada. And the designer in me died a little. And of course I had almost no time to post anything here. But there you have it. And since there is an ebb and flow to everything, I expect next week to be filled with unicorns, rainbows, and lots of time to make creative wonders for my clients.

Right?

Labels: customer service, whining

posted at 8:04 PM Leave your comments here: 0 comments

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