We had a client who wanted their ecommerce system to produce a branded PDF summary of a customer’s order. Essentially their requirement was for a “Delivery Note” in PDF form ready to be printed and included with a parcel.
This seemed entirely logical request, so rather than build this as a piece of functionality unique for one client, we took the opportunity to develop this as an additional feature within our core ecommerce platform.
This approach has therefore benefited our customer, our future customers using our core ecommerce package, and Bloom as an agency, as it is yet an additional feature of our ecommerce system making it just that little bit more attractive.
While discussing this with our Head of Operations he said “Excellent…beyond the brief…”, and hence the inspiration behind the article!
What IS going beyond the brief?
To get a good well balanced overview of what going beyond the brief is, I put this exact question to a selection of the Bloom team…
“We push the boundaries of new technology to deliver new and exciting user experiences. It satisfies our passion for what we do, and ensures the user experience is better so the client sees more user engagement on their site… and ultimately conversions.”
Matt Martin, Creative and User Experience Director
“A client of ours wanted a mobile website and many companies would have just put together a quote and left it at that. Instead, one of our Account Managers suggested we revisit their market place, re-examine their customer and set that against the mobile market to ensure we delivered a mobile site which not only met current market and demographic requirements, but would slip in seamlessly to the client’s existing marketing mix.”
Stu Turner, Account Manager
How DO you go beyond the brief?
To go truly beyond the brief you need to tap into the skills and resources of your team to exceed both your client’s expectations and your own!
You need to cultivate the organisational culture within the business; encouraging your team to interact and all get involved in discussing projects, clients, and how to continually add value to the relationship. Here at Bloom Media we hold weekly production meetings with the entire team, to ensure everyone has visibility of the current projects. At the end of each meeting we have a 30 minute presentation by a team member which encourages the cross-pollination of ideas, skills, and latest discoveries from the industry.
Bringing the team together this way helps build relationships, but it also important to build relationships with your client. Claire Hunter-Smith, our Social Media Manager at Bloom says, “Building a relationship with the Client is about more than just understanding what the client requires, but also what the person (your client contact) requires in order to understand and deliver their side of things most effectively”.
We find this is largely the responsibility of the Account Managers who should be encouraged to be bold and actively challenge the briefs they are given.
Stu Turner, Account Manager at Bloom suggests, “Challenge (where appropriate) the client’s brief against their brand – how does the project they are proposing fit in with their aims as a team, the aims of their department, the aims of the company and how does that fit with their brand?”. It’s not just the client who should be challenged however, it’s also internal team members. Stu goes on to say “it’s very easy to get sucked in a ‘we’ve always done it this way’ mentality or jump to the first/easiest solution. I find taking people out of the normal environment and capturing ideas as and when they happen (rather than in an enforced ideas meeting) is often to most rewarding and exciting way to answer a brief.”
Some More Considerations
It is important to bear in mind a few things before going that extra mile. Mainly, the time involved in doing this work – invariably, time spent means additional costs, either to you or your client. It is important to gauge whether investing the time will benefit either party enough to warrant the additional costs. Claire Hunter-Smith advises, “Keeping your eyes and ears open even outside offices hours for inspiration/opportunities to help your clients e.g. seeing a local event that your client would benefit from attending and advising them about it, or seeing a TV Ad that gives you an idea that could directly inspire your client’s next Ad.”.
It is also essential that expectations are managed so that the client is aware that additional effort has been put to further strengthen the relationship.
Honey for Everyone
In your personal life, going beyond the brief is simply doing more than is asked of you to help another person. Afterwards, the recipient will hopefully treat you more favourably and this leaves you feeling better about yourself. It is the same in business but the benefits to both parties are often on a bigger more noticeable scale.
Coming back to the example of our client who needed a mobile website; this meant that Bloom had the opportunity to become even further ‘mobile enabled’. So when we engaged with our client to conduct a research project, Bloom committed almost double the charged time to bring every team in the agency further up to speed with mobile; from development, design and UX, through to implementation and tracking.
I welcome any thoughts, comments, and inspiring examples you would care to share.
To infinity, and BEYOND the brief (allow me one).
Image from 
It may be a term I’ve fabricated: the word ‘persuasional’ doesn’t even exist in a dictionary. What I hope it does is describe a vital ingredient in web design that is sometimes poorly considered. In my opinion, creating a ‘persuasional experience’ goes hand in hand with the usability of a website and the overall user experience.