Type A Learning Agency

Clients aren't always right: new economy service maxims
by Anna Belyaev

You’re nice enough. Your clients are nice enough. You’ve gone the extra mile to do everything they’ve asked you to do for weeks without complaining or losing your cool. Still, they’re not satisfied. Why does it so often feel like there’s some kind of power struggle at play between such nice people and their clients? Perhaps there is! And the crux of the problem, as well as the solution to it, might just rest in the very vocabulary we use to describe and understand our relationship to our clients.

In my 15-some years of experience managing high-tech projects, confusion about the core meanings of both “client” and “service” appear to be at the root of most misunderstandings between vendors and their clients. Unfortunately, for many of us, the very concept of a “client” sets up a predefined power construct in which we view our clients as being in charge and ourselves as being told what to do. (How many times have you been told the client is always right or the client knows best?) So, we concentrate our energies on finding out the details of our “assignment” and then setting to work to get it done.

As helpful, professional and “nice” as this behavior may seem, it amounts, essentially, to assuming a subservient, defensive, closed posture that makes it hard for us to listen to our clients with our full selves over the course of the project. All we need to do is to listen for our next instructions, after all, right? And, of course, to keep a lookout for any indication that we might wind up with the short end of the stick so we can be sure to get some checks and balances in place to protect ourselves. In fact, most experienced project managers set out early to get these protections in place – knowing that it’s actually very risky and naive to assume our clients are always in charge, always right and always know what they need.

The problem is, we typically fail to build in similar protections for our clients, which is a chief reason why even the most experienced project teams often find themselves starting to view their clients as a burden or liability mid-project at about the same time their clients suddenly find themselves with an inexplicably punitive, obstinate or exceedingly cautious vendor on their hands.

Whatever we’re taught by our cliches, I have yet to meet a client who felt consistently in charge, right or certain of what she or he needed.

On the contrary, their biggest fears typically revolve around the risks of losing control, being wrong and not having sufficient information to make a confident, defensible decision. Clients certainly don’t go around looking for vendors who will just do what they’re told and sacrifice all health and reason to do so. It’s we who bring all of that baggage to the table. In setting up such stiff and unrealistic assumptions for our clients to live up to, we’re not making it easy for them to interact as openly and confidently with us as needed on complex projects.

Of course, there are real economic factors that contribute to this subservient disposition of ours toward our clients. After all, they’re the ones with the money we want or need, and in a competitive environment, it’s a buyer’s market. Having the money means having power, but if we only see our clients in this light, we’re missing the boat. Fact is, they’re people who really need to achieve something for some reason or other, and they’re asking you to help! Approach them from this perspective and you’ll see that you already have a balance of power and can engage in helping your clients as you would your own colleagues and project team.

Like you, your clients are generally very capable of making tough calls and wise decisions when called upon to do so, and don’t need to be spared of information that is difficult to hear or hard to understand. But, they and their organizations do need room to grow, learn and change over the course of a project without undue surprises, attitude or penalties.

So, if you want to improve both client satisfaction and your own satisfaction in serving your clients, I suggest you begin by replacing a few key words in your vocabulary and see where that leads you, namely:

Consider your “client” a “colleague,” “friend,” “partner” or “teammate” – whatever helps you begin to view him or her more as an individual who has a vested interest in a project that you also have a vested interest in.
Forget the maxims “the client knows best” and “the client is always right” and replace them with the more accurate and useful “clients are human” or “clients are people, too” – whatever reminds you to remain open and sensitive to your clients’ broader needs.

This article originally appeared in e-Prarie on 5/29/01.