Meeting Client Expectations

August 20, 2009 | Author: PM Hut | Filed under: Project Stakeholder Management

Meeting Client Expectations
By Clifford Ananian

The singular key to successfully satisfying a client is simple: Meet or Exceed Expectations.

A simple concept that can be applied to many aspects of one’s life. For instance, how do you satisfy your employer? Meet or exceed expectations? How do you satisfy your family? Your co-workers? Your employees?

A simple concept. Not so simple to achieve.

In the case of satisfying a client, there are two, not so obvious, issues that need to be addressed: (1) Who IS your client, and (2) What are his expectations?

Who is your client?

This is not always an obvious answer. Often times you have a contract with company “XYZ” that is being administered by one or more parties. The “client” is the one or more people that will ultimately decide whether the project is “successful” or not. The “client” is the individual(s) that determine whether you will have additional contracts with this company. The “client” may be the one that is capable of campaigning for you in your company or his.

Clearly there are a number of parties within company “XYZ” that may be your client. In fact, the “client” may not even work for company “XYZ”. The “client” may be someone within your own company! If your company is focused on protection of profit margin more than ensuring that the Owner is satisfied with the effort, the “client” may have to be your own management! You better know this before you begin to execute the work.

In many cases, the “client” is a combination of people. Before you start the work, you need to come to a conclusion of “who” the client is, or maybe the prioritization of who the client is. For instance, you may conclude that the Owner’s project manager is your first priority to satisfy, followed by the Owner’s operations manager, and then the Owner’s maintenance manager. It is important that once you have formed an opinion of who the client is, you communicate that both internally and externally.

It is suggested that you don’t come to the conclusion of “who the client is” without sharing your thoughts with the Owner. If you do this tactfully, you often help the Owner recognize the sensitivity of this issue. The Owner may help you categorize who in his organization is “most important”. Of course he typically is going to tell you that he is the deciding vote, but your addressing this issue with him will help him understand how critical this is to his success, and how sensitive you are to meeting his expectations.

When conflict arises, you can return to these discussions with the Owner. You can help him recognize that some decisions will ultimately satisfy one group in his organization while alienating others.

Let the Owner shoulder some of the responsibility for managing expectations.

What are the Expectations?

Not a simple question but, once again, a question that must be asked and understood PRIOR to starting the work.

What shouldn’t be missed in this part of the exercise is that it is a two part issue: First, understand the expectations, second, if the expectations are unrealistic, modify the expectations to something that can be achieved.

The second part of this issue is the part that is overlooked often and ultimately results in failure.

Understand The Client’s Expectations

First, understand the expectations. Ask the client – he’s the one that ultimately judges whether he is satisfied or not. Attempt to quantify the expectations. Don’t allow them to be subjective. For instance, how important is it to finish the work within the original budget? More or less important that finishing within schedule? Is two week’s improvement in schedule worth an overrun of the budget? By how much? One percent? Ten percent? Is early completion worth anything? How about completion below budget? Under budget better than early?

Expectations can typically be quantified very easily. They often involve cost, schedule, and quality of the installation. Quality is typically a given and must be focused on early to properly understand. Quality is often more important to those that ultimately are not judged as the high priority “client”.

While you are attempting to quantify “expectations” use this time to help address your expectations of the client. The issues that often influence your ability to work within budget and schedule are untimely “changes”, and the Owner’s inability to review and approve in a timely manner. Make sure that the client understands how crucial this is to your ability to satisfy him.

Modify The Expectations to Something Achievable

More important than understanding the client’s expectations, is to mold these expectations to something that you can succeed at.

If you estimated the task to cost $10,000 and the “client” expects it to cost $5,000, there is no purpose in your proceeding into the work. You have already failed.

It is up to the Project Manager to sell the Owner on expectations that are reasonable. One can either convince the Owner that $10,000 is the best that he should hope for, or change the scope of work to something that can be delivered for $5,000. If you fail to convince him, or modify the work product, you can never succeed.

The success of many companies and people are based on this singular premise. There are many people that are truly unspectacular other than their ability to sell low expectations. If an Owner is convinced that a project would be highly successful if it can be completed in two years, and you manage to complete it in 18 months… you are a hero! Don’t undersell yourself. Try to make it easy to succeed!

Communicate

This is the most important aspect of “Meeting Expectations”. If you now know who the client is, and what his expectations are, you need to clearly communicate this to your team. It is no good for you to understand the client and expectations, if your team is working for their own interpretation of who the client and expectations are.

This is a very common problem in engineering companies. It is probably the nature of an engineer. They have an opinion and they tend to be very pig-headed about it. They tend to know, better than the Owner, what the Owner wants or needs. Or they have a relationship with the Owner’s maintenance manager and they are responding to his interpretation of success instead of your interpretation of success.

The Project Manager is responsible for steering the effort toward the objective. He needs to clearly communicate to his team. He needs to sell his understanding of the client expectations to the team. The project manager needs to constantly monitor the individual efforts to ensure they are working toward a common goal.

Conclusion

The concept is simple. Meet or Exceed the Client’s Expectations.

The techniques to accomplish this concept are far more complicated: Listen, Interpret, Prioritize, Negotiate, Modify, Communicate.

Clifford Ananian is a Project Manager experienced in both managing engineering and construction on heavy, industrial type projects in the Power Generation, Chemical, Specialty Chemical, Cogeneration, Pulp & Paper, and alternative energy fields. Clifford can be contacted through is blog, Project Management Consultants.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, August 20th, 2009 and is filed under Project Stakeholder Management. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

1 person has left a comment

I couldn’t agree with you more on this entire article. I think discovering what it is exactly that the client needs as opposed to only what the client expects is probably one of the most overlooked steps in laying out a proper project. Often times we get so focused on what we can do or provide for a client that we don’t take the time to listen to what it is they are really looking for and don’t clarify enough upstream objectives and required resources.

Quantifiable and realistic objectives, achievable time line, appropriate resources and budget, key milestones, major risks… should be transparently discussed before any agreement, and recorded for future reference. From there, each party should be fully accountable to make the project a success: the client to provide the necessary support and you to deliver on results and on time. As needs might be lower than expectations, you could even overachieve and reach the stars.

Gabriel Blanc-Laine wrote on August 23, 2009 - 9:11 pm | Visit Link

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