Customers are a demanding group … that’s a given. When we have all of our regular project responsibilities to deal with on a daily and weekly basis, how do we know when we’re doing the right things for our customers? How do we know we’re managing them well, responding to the right requests, saying ‘yes’ when we should and saying ‘no’ when we should, and ensuring that our actions are not detrimental to the forward progress of our project?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You can’t always base it on customer satisfaction levels. Because attentive ‘do-anything-for-the-customer’ behavior may get a project manager and team high marks mid-way through a project. But upon implementation, if they’ve said yes to too many things that ended up modifying scope and delivering a system to the customer that is ultimately not what they ordered, then that customer satisfaction at the end of the project will be low. The end user community will have a product that they didn’t sign up for and that’s a very bad thing.

 

 

 

 

In order to ensure we’re doing right by our customers, we first need to have confidence in what we’re doing. And we need to have confidence that we’re doing the right things for the project. We can do that in a few ways, including:

 

 

 

 


 

 

 

 

 

 

 





     
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  • Knowing the scope and statement of work inside and out. A very detailed understanding of the project scope and statement of work (if these are two separate documents) will ensure that you can make quick decisions on customer requests. You’ll look confident and your customer will actually appreciate it when you point out their out-of-scope requests if they are in conflict with the goals of the project.


     




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  • Track issues and risks carefully. Having a good process in place to deal with project issues and project risks as they are identified or realized can help a project team keep the project on track when it would otherwise be derailed. And preparation in this area will help you make good reactive decisions that won’t be in conflict with the project scope and goals.




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  • Effective communication. Keep the customer well informed throughout the project. This may be the single most effective management tool you can use with your customer. If they know what’s going on and where the project stands at all times, their demands and requests decrease and the likelihood that they’ll request anything that can drive the project off course will greatly decrease. If they know you’re in charge and doing it well, they often will leave the delivery team alone most of the time. If you pay for landscapers to take care of your yard, you don’t follow them around with a rake and a shovel, right? You get the point…




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  • Always maintain an up-to-date project schedule. Keep your team and your customer apprised of project status with status reports and meetings, but having a schedule in their hands every week that makes them understand where things stand on the project is invaluable. Lots of tools project management and scheduling software tools are available for this including Seavus’ Project Planner web-based tool.




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Summary

 

 

 

 

It’s not always about doing everything your customer wants. In fact, that’s usually not advisable. It’s about having confidence in your own ability to manage their project, keeping them informed with the right, accurate information using the tools you have, and always keep the scope of the project and the end goals in mind. After all, it’s always about delivering a usable product to the customer’s end users – that’s where the true customer satisfaction game is won.