Video production services being "full service" usually means nothing and I'm tired of pretending it does

Unpopular opinion maybe: the phrase "full-service video production" has been diluted to the point where it communicates almost nothing useful about what a company actually does or how good they are at it.

Every production company says they're full service. What they mean ranges from "we have a camera and an iMac with Premiere on it" to "we have a 30-person team with in-house color grading, audio post, motion graphics, and a dedicated client services department."

Both of those are technically "full service" if you're generous with the definition. Only one of them means what clients think it means when they read it on a website.

I've started specifically asking production companies to describe their post-production pipeline before I work with them, because that's where the real difference shows up, not in the shoot, which most competent companies can handle fine, but in what happens after the shoot, how they handle revisions, how they deliver files, how they communicate through the approval process.

The companies that can describe their post-production workflow in specific, boring detail are the ones I trust. The ones who say "we make your vision come to life" are the ones I run from.