Five Ways to Calm an Irate Project Customer

During the course of our projects, we often run into situations where our customer needs some massaging.  Issues come up, problems arise that are the fault of the delivery team, budget overruns happen, and schedules slip.  Rarely does a project team make it through an entire engagement without the customer being upset – often justifiably so – about something.

But what happens when the customer sees red?  I’m talking about the situations where the customer is more than a little concerned.  Just explaining the situation isn’t going to calm the customer like a normal bump in the project road would.  How do you handle this type of customer situation?  Hopefully, it doesn’t happen to you often, but when it does you definitely have moments when you may wish someone else was managing the project.

There’s no guaranteed formula for success with the customer in this situation – and depending on how bad it is you may find yourself at best with a canceled project and at worst looking for other employment.  But here are five suggested activities to undertake to try to keep the customer from blowing their top, taking their ball, and going home (with all of their cash, too)….

• Be honest. If there’s one key thing I’ve learned in dealing with the customer it’s to always be as up front and honest when major issues arise.  The customer isn’t dumb…they’re smart.  And they know when they’re being snowballed.  Include them in the issue discussion as early as possible and tell them everything – make them part of the solution.  They may still pull the plug on you, but by involving them in the solution you’re getting them to invest in it and that will increase their confidence and decrease the likelihood that they’ll quit on you.

• Bring in an expert. Bring in a subject matter expert on the problem and have them address it directly with the customer.  The customer needs to see that you’re on it and have an expert on it before they ask for your head on a platter.

• Go onsite with your team. Don’t wait for the next time you’re scheduled to be onsite to kick off a phase – go immediately.  It may require a major brainstorming session and you can use a product like Seavus’ Dropmind to work through this type of meeting.  I did this very successfully with a major airline a couple of years ago and it helped to save the day.  If the customer sees you making that kind of a presence – especially if it’s at your expense – they’ll know you’re serious about resolving it.  And that weighs heavily with the customer.

• Get your executive leadership involved. This may happen anyway if the customer is mad enough.  But if you’re proactive about it – if you go to the CEO before your customer does – it may save your job.  And when the customer sees how important they are to your company with the CEO adding his involvement, that will say a lot to them about how you’re trying to resolve the situation and the priority you have put to that resolution.

• Negotiate free or discounted work. You’ll probably need executive buy-in for this, but push for giving the customer free work as compensation for the major issue at hand.  You probably want to save this as a last resort, but it will almost always rescue a project – at least temporarily – that is about to be canceled by the customer.  If they know they’re getting some work for free, they will usually stick around for a while to see if you can resolve whatever major issue has hit the project.

Summary

It’s never a good thing when our customer is threatening major action.  But if we remain calm, involve the customer in the resolution, be honest with the customer and act as proactively as possible, there is a chance that we can rectify the situation.  You’re in charge – use the tools you have to take corrective action….your executive leadership, your skilled team, and your customer.

Related posts:

1. The Onsite Visit Progress Report
2. Common Project Issues: Keeping Bad News from the Customer
3. The High Road
4. Making Good Project Decisions – Part 2
5. The Monday Morning Quarterback Meets the After the Project PM