A great customer is gold. You enjoying working with them. They enjoy working with you. Man, could you ask for anything more? We’re so thankful for our great clients. And I wonder, what’s in their DNA that makes them so magical?

Time and again, this comes down to respect. And it isn’t just about a service provider relationship (our relationship). Their approach is the same with their employees, their customers, and often stems from their personal lives as well. It’s the old adage that you can tell if someone’s a quality person by how they treat wait staff. If they’re short, rude, or snappy with someone waiting on them, they’re probably putting on an act for you, while great clients are great with everyone.

Now, I’ve worked with some real jokers over the years. Customers who don’t pay their bills, ever. Or ones who complain when you won’t do twice as much work for half the price. (And most of those ones call on us again after we say no thanks, because they inevitably get crap work from the next person/company they try to pinch. But that doesn’t mean they respect you. It just means they’re desperate. But I digress.)

Great clients don’t play these games because they know that a reliable service provider (or employee) won’t be reliable for long if they aren’t treated well, which can mean as little as providing them with the resources they require to do their job properly.

There’s a great story on this subject that Scott Bedbury relayed in his book New Brand World. Following a disastrous ad pitch delivered to Nike by Wieden and Kennedy in the mid-80s, with his butt on the line as Advertising Director of Nike, when asked by Phil Knight how he was going to fix the problem Scott responded by saying they need to pay Wieden and Kennedy more. It may seem borderline ridiculous to reward someone for failure, but that wasn’t the point; Scott understood what was required of Wieden and Kennedy, and knew they could deliver if they had the resources to do so. And that’s a sure sign of respect.

So, how do we know our customers are driven by this culture of respect? Not one, but two of our customers have been recognized as Worldblu’s Most Democratic Workplaces, a sure sign of respect for their employees. So a hearty congratulations to Brainpark and CommunityLend for this auspicious acknowledgement.

And thanks for being so magical.

The post What do all great customers have in common? appeared first on Say Yeah!.

For years Americans have enjoyed the advantages of person to person lending and borrowing, but due to strict regulations here in Canada, loans could only be issued by accredited lenders like banks and credit card companies. Working closely with regulators, CommunityLend will soon be offering Canadian lenders and borrowers alike the opportunity to play in the once tightly-closed $100 Billion industry.

With a bright idea in place, and even brighter future, CommunityLend came to us looking for help introducing online person to person lending to the Canadian public. We designed and wrote the CommunityLend site to gradually walk potential borrowers and lenders through this new process, clearly defining what person to person lending is and its benefits to consumers.

While we can’t yet show you the full scope of our marketing, design and application development work for CommunityLend, we encourage you to take a look at the first phase of development which is viewable at CommunityLend. This includes the new design standards and visual language, launched April 2008.

What we’ve worked on:

• Strategic Development from the Brand out.
• Communications concept and marketing web site.
• Application interface design.
• Community site design.

The post Community Lend bringing social lending to Canada. appeared first on Say Yeah!.