Meetings that seem to have no point to them

[PKPopsy]

I own a small company, and we have a freelance designer who did our website for us a few years ago. I thought it needed a bit of a freshen up and we met at length to discuss it.

Three weeks later she sent a link through of the site, with the proviso that unfortunately she had lost all her notes from the meeting and so had had to do it from memory, and did I remember what we had agreed. She had done a few of the changes, but the work looked rushed to me. To advance I responded in detail to what she had done item by item. She did not reply to my comments. The day before the next scheduled meeting I emailed again, she didn't answer. So I called and said if she wasn't going to reply or comment on my comments there was no point in the meeting. It was better to do it after that had happened. Her view was that us discussing and working together was the best and most efficient way to move forward. I disagreed and said my job was to provide the materiel, and validate her work.

Who is right? and AIBU

As someone who has worked in creative businesses, this person's conduct and way of doing their work is unprofessional.

"Us discussing and working together was the best and most efficient way to move forward" - yes, she is right, but my word, she has to then make meticulous notes of what was said, and then follow up that meeting with a brief summary of the changes she will make.

It doesn't matter how creative you are, how airy a person you are, you can't service a client's needs without noting what the client wants.

You can push back on what the client wants, advise best practice, but if you then go away and forget everything that was said, then what's the point of any dialogue?

IMHO she needs to sharpen up her whole approach otherwise she could risk losing you as a client.

Also this reminds me of a situation I had when I was the client, not the creative -

We had a creative agency who instead of meeting to discuss the work, then going away and making changes, then holding a call to discuss the changes...

...no instead, they wanted to book out a couple of days or so where they made the changes "live" while we commented, a bit like a creative making session where we get to see things as they happen.

Fine if we had the time, but no client has the time to do that in our sector - they essentially didn't want to do a meeting and then have the pressure of going away and making work that reflected the meeting's outcomes.

The meeting format is established because it works when properly documented, when creatives ask the right questions and make sure they leave the room without ambiguity about what the client expects or wants.

YANBU!

Nope, I can hear my dad saying ‘why keep a dog and bark yourself’. Find another designer.