Working with a partner shouldn’t be a mystery.
The only question you should be asking is whether that’s a cat, a weasel, or a goblin.
The answer is yes.
Consulting can seem like a locked box from the outside, without a ton of clarity on what you’re going to get out of the relationship. Worse, what you might get is a nesting doll of sales pitches, creating havoc around budget planning and eroding your relationship with what should be a trusted partner.
That can’t be an option with Trust & Safety. We’re dedicated to being transparent about how we work and what you can expect from us.
Open Knowledge. Safer Platforms
The first step is simple: let’s chat. We want to learn more about your platform, existing Trust & Safety teams and processes, and where you feel like some outside support might be helpful.
Sometimes a high-level friendly conversation with an outside perspective is enough to solve something. And good news - not only do we love talking about Trust & Safety with people, a friendly conversation is free. No sales pitch required.
But if what you’re looking for goes a bit deeper than a 30-minute call can solve for, here’s what that would look like.
We work with you like we’re part of the team. Unless you don’t want us to be. It’s cool either way. We’re pretty flexible like that.
We’ve worked at startups, some of the largest platforms out there, and everywhere in between. We know that Trust & Safety teams thrive and vibe based on their own cultures, and we bring the best of what we’ve seen to the party. Whether you need one specialist or a phalanx of Safety experts, we spin up fast and embed directly with your teams.
But some parties are invitation only, and if you’d rather we were an external partner providing a steady stream of recommendations for you to work with your teams on, we’re not mad at it. We can help from anywhere, whether it’s the metaphorical desk next to you or via satellite.
How we start
We start from a place of partnership: our team will work with you to create a proposal that matches your needs and your budget, because a safer internet is more important than having sales goals.
Following an introductory call, our team will huddle up to put together a structured set of consulting plans for you. Even if we’re recommending a single consultant and not a team, our initial recommendations will come from the collective experience we share. We’ll happily chat back and forth with you along the way to make sure everything is clear, well-defined, and expectations are set on both sides.
Some variables to be prepared for in a consulting plan include:
Pricing Style
We offer predictable pricing, either by deliverable or by the hour, with retainers available to lock in flexible support from a consultant or team for a fixed period of time. We’ll base pricing on both the type of consult you’re looking for and how that aligns with our in-house expertise.
Generalist, Specialist, or Team
We’re pretty proud to say that we have a broad set of experience across SafetyNet • Works. Depending on what type of support you’re looking for and what we see when we poke around, we may suggest specific consultants with expertise in one or more areas as part of our recommendation. We may also recommend a team of two or more consultants if it’ll help you meet your goals more efficiently. We’ll walk you through our thinking on who you’re working with every step of the way.
Service Types
Because we offer services to companies of all sizes, we break up what we do here into four categories:
Recommendations come in the form of detailed reports with clear action items to consider. For some platforms, our work will stop here, with recommendations being socialized internally for alignment and execution.
Deliverables are traditional work product coming from recommended action items, such as documentation, data trackers, S&O planning, targeted project management, team trainings, product risk assessments, and leadership advisory sessions.
Intermediary Support. Some of our recommendations may include an offer for us to manage relationships with third-parties, such as service and tooling vendors, BPOs, or government agencies.
Retainer. Feel like you need some version of all of the above, and those needs are shifting week to week? We can help add some stability and predictability by putting a consultant or team on deck for a period of time.
Engagement Timeline
Following a thumbs up from you, we’ll generate an initial quote tailored to the services you requested, as well as your timeline and budget. This process usually takes 3 - 4 business days on our side. Then you get to take it through what we all know is a delightful approval process full of unicorns and rainbows. Yay!
We begin all partnerships with Recommendations, even when we know we’ll be moving forward with Deliverables, Intermediary Support, or putting a Retainer in place. This ensures clear communication and alignment between all of us, and provides an artifact for you to keep for later reference.
Prior to beginning this work we’ll partner with you to establish clear timelines, any access requirements or blockers to delivery, and communication standards. Delivery can range anywhere from a few days to a few months, depending on the scale and scope requested. We’ll provide Recommendations on a rolling basis when they aren’t fully interdependent.
After the Recommendations stage, our continued engagement is up to you! Whether you want us to pivot to other focus areas, take on action items yourself internally, have us get into the work ourselves, or some combination of the three, we’re standing by.