LO4: Communication with my Clients So Far
For this project, I’m working with a four-man animation team who call themselves the Ragtime Gals. I first met with them in December to find out what would be required of me. They informed me that they’d like for me to record, sync and mix all the audio for their animation including music and foley. I’ve been given a lot of creative control over the audio just as long as I meet a few specific outcomes: I must record some piano parts to be used at the beginning and end of the animation, and some old car sound effects to be used in a chase scene. I suggested that some music could go well with the chase scene, however opinions were mixed on that idea.
Meeting with the animation team regularly was difficult as they were rarely free at the same time and, since animation was a slow progress, they would rarely have any updates for me. I’ve still been creating sound to the original animatic until now in March. Because of this, I have been mainly communicating with the lead animator via email. I tell him of my progress regularly and he informs the rest of the team of my work when required.
Over the past few months, I’ve noticed a few problems with email communication with my client. My main issue is that replies can be quite slow – I guess he doesn’t check his emails as regularly as I do. This can be quite an issue when I’m needing a fast response. For example, I’ve recently been needing his input on when to book a piano recording session. I’ve got couple opportunities to book a session in the next few days but if he doesn’t respond to me soon then we might miss these chances.
To solve this, I’ve been debating on the idea of using social media, such as Facebook Messenger, to communicate with my clients. Although formality is important for businesses, email communication might be seen by some as overly-formal and obsolete medium of communication (Customer Service, 2016). With a large number of people now actively using social media (64% of the UK population since January 2017 according to Statista.com), it only makes sense for businesses to communicate with clients in places where they are more active
Using social media can offer a lot of advantages over email (Maximize Social Business, 2018). The biggest advantage of using Messenger is that business can have “real-time conversations with clients” – Faster responses are exactly what I’m looking for. In addition, Messenger also allows me to embed all sorts of media including images, videos and audio (for those long-winded messages or even possible sound effect examples that I want to share). Messenger also has a group-chat feature which could allow me to communicate with the entire animation team.
References
Customer Service (2016) http://www.customerservice.ae/customer-service-through-instant-messaging
Maximize Social Business (2018) https://maximizesocialbusiness.com/facebook-messenger-vs-email-26025/
Statista (2017) https://www.statista.com/statistics/507405/uk-active-social-media-and-mobile-social-media-users/