Understanding What Your Clients Expect

I recently answered a question on LinkedIn regarding client management, and the content is relevant to Interactive Project Management. I've pasted the question and answer below for the readers of this blog, to reiterate the importance of managing client expectations - a topic I touch on in most of my entries.

Q: What are the unexpressed expectations of your customers, and how can they be brought more in line with what you will actually deliver?

A: Ultimately, any individual or team providing a service is responsible for understanding their client's expectations. As the question suggests, these expectations are not always clearly articulated, since they are often multi-faceted, and can affect more than one stakeholder. To be clear, you cannot meet expectations that you are unaware of, so the question becomes, how do you work with a client to unearth their true needs? Here are a few suggestions:

- Initiate the engagement with a thorough discovery process: Discovery is a fundamental due diligence that any service provider must execute. A discovery phase may include exploration of who key stakeholders are, their discreet business requirements, the immediate and long-term project objectives, project constraints, and how the project is tied to your client's professional profile. Working through these questions will formulate a more complete profile of their expectations.

- Be transparent: Let your client know exactly what they can expect from you. Describe your work process, mutual roles and responsibilities, and what project deliverables you will produce at the onset of the initiative. Again, this tactic will ensure you're managing your client's expectations, by providing them with an opportunity to flag concerns about your methodology or intended output before you invest a significant amount of time in the engagement.

Incorporating these strategies should help uncover and align your client's expectations with your own understanding of the project. It is your fundamental responsibility to guide your client down the right path, and you will not do so without properly understanding what they expect as well as what they actually need.

Internet Project Management in 2007

In the late nineties, when many interactive Project Managers were beginning to find a place in the online world, the job requirements for success were very different. It was enough to have a handle on work process and technology - add some time management and organizational skills, and you were fairly certain you'd get through any given day. As the entire industry has evolved, so has the role of the interactive Project Manager.

With a much more savvy internet audience and better-versed clients, it is becoming increasingly important that a Project Manager is able to not only understand the components of development and execution, but the objectives, challenges and trends faced by each client and each business vertical they work within. In other words, a modern day interactive Project Manager must be able to offer strategic value to their internal and client teams. The ability to execute from production through to launch is a given. What separates the great Project Managers from the mediocre is the capacity to understand their client's business and offer solutions that achieve specific online goals. This requires adaptability and a broad base of business knowledge you may not learn at school. This type of know-how will come from on the job experience, for which there is simply no replacement.

The longer you work as a Project Manager, the more historical knowledge you will carry with you, which you will often be able to leverage from one client to the next. This will ensure your clients see you as a true subject matter expert who is able to offer value beyond a timeline and project plan. In no way does this minimize the importance of execution, but it draws a definitive line between the basics and the soft skills that can push a career in project management to the next level.