How do you hand a deployment over to a client?

Have them do it

Set aside an hour. The client writes a tag, verifies it, installs it and records it, using their own equipment and your documentation.

You watch and say nothing unless they are about to do something irreversible.

Every place they hesitate is a gap in the documentation, and you fix it that afternoon while it is fresh.

This is the only handover method that tells you the truth, and it takes less time than the meeting it replaces.

Four things they must be able to do

Add a tag. Write, verify, install, record. The whole cycle, without you.

Replace a dead one. Including preserving the identity so the history survives.

Change the destination. Which is where the value of the redirect lives, and which nobody demonstrates.

Retire a location. Cleanly, so the register stays true and nothing points at something that has gone.

If they can do those four, they own the deployment. If they cannot, they own a dependency on you.

Hand over the keys, literally

The domain, or confirmation that it is already in their name. This is the single most important item and the one most often left with the agency.

Access to whatever resolves the addresses, with an account in their name rather than yours.

Any tag passwords, recorded where the deployment records live rather than in a message.

And the register, exported, in a form they can read without your software.

What happens after

Agree what you are still responsible for and for how long, in writing, because ambiguity here produces the worst kind of dispute.

Agree how they reach you when something breaks in a year, and whether that is chargeable.

Suggest a review after the first few months, which is when the first replacements and the first surprises appear.

And leave the pilot data with them. A client who can compare next year against your baseline can manage the deployment, and one who cannot will conclude it stopped working.