I’m one of those young, creative, and somewhat smart people in the industry trying to build a company in the web industry, but this is an issue that has been nagging me for months, and it’s to the point where I feel like it needs to be shouted from the mountain tops (although this blog is probably more like a anthill). It may not be the best business decision on my part since it encourages competing companies to become better. If they do it will make us humans work that much harder.

I’m sorry to say it, but few web development companies seem to do a good job of development and a good job of managing client expectations. Maybe your company is good at development, but stinks at managing client expectations. Or maybe it’s the other way around and you are great with the customer, but your team is a bunch of junior developers who crank out crap. Oddly enough, if your company falls into the latter you have a much better chance of being successful and surviving than the former.

Before look at some of the effects of managing (and failing to manage) client expectations let’s start with a simple definition:

Managing client expectations is the ability communicate proactively with the client in a reasonable and realistic manner that allows them to take ownership of decisions that may affect their project or business.

Managing client expectations is about communicating honestly, openly, and often with the client. It requires informing them of things that have the potential to impact their business or their project. I use the term proactive in the definition because you’re not doing it right if you do something and than communicate after the fact. Heck, doing that is like this the plumber who came to your house and failed to manage your expectations:

A plumber comes to your house to fix your toilet. At first glance it looks like it’ll take an hour to do so you set aside $100 on the counter to cover the cost and leave so the plumber can work in peace. While working the plumber discovers a much bigger plumbing problem. He’s really in the zone though, so rather than calling you he just does what’s necessary to fix the issue. You get home later in the day, and on the counter you see your $100. Next to it is an invoice for $2,200 and a note that reads: I ran into a bigger problem, but I was really in the zone so I replaced the plumbing in the basement because it would have had to have been done.

Do you feel the plumber did a good job of managing your expectations? Would you hire that plumber back? Would you pay the bill? I would answer three hell nos. Yet, many web developers and young web entrepreneurs find this perfectly acceptable and they wouldn’t think twice about doing it. To them it’s just how you move a project along its merry little way.

For folks who aren’t aware this is a problem–_it is a problem and you should stop doing it_. For folks who do it and know they do it, wake up, its unhealthy for your client, you, and your business.

I think it’s universal knowledge that finding a new client is more costly then keeping a client. Every time you interact with a client you have a chance to increase or decrease your likelihood of keeping them as a client. When you manage their expectations well you will most likely keep them. Here are three general reasons why:

• build a healthy relationship
• build trust
• empower the client, giving them ownership

Positive effects of managing client expectations

Build a healthy relationship

Every time you interact with a client you have the ability to build a slightly better relationship. Setting clear expectations with the client with good solid communication strengthens the bond between you and your customer. Customers who have a healthy relationship w/their suppliers are not likely to jump ship.

A new developer joins your team. Every time you work with him you notice he takes the time do things right rather than just quick. He also seem to ask questions and raise questions at all the right times. You find yourself comfortable working with him and before you know if you even think that you do better when working with him. When the developer’s 90 day review comes up you’re first to speak up and ask the team to keep him.

Build trust

Part of building a healthy relationship is trust. To me, trust is like trying to level a character in EverQuest. As you build up stats and level you gain a new skill or perhaps a new magic. The higher you level the more your character is capable of. The same is true for the relationship with a client. As you achieve new levels of trust with your client you achieve new capabilities for doing things. Perhaps your client sends you more work. Perhaps your client refers you to his peers and to other companies. Perhaps your client invites you to more business-oriented meetings because he wants you involved in streamlining technical aspects of their business. Perhaps you become the goto shop for your client’s organization. Without trust this is not possible.

A new developer joins your team. After the first few months of working with her you find she is a good, honest, hard working, and capable developer. You build up trust in her as a developer. A potential client comes in and you need to send over a couple developers to help kick off the first Planning Game and do some story estimation. You send her. You know she’ll do a good job, ask questions, and be honest.

Empower the client, giving them ownership

Empowering the client is something that we really need to do a better job of in our industry. Managing a clients expectations lets the client own the decisions that need to be made that impact their project or business. These decisions are not ours to make, they are our clients. When the client owns the decisions, they own the project, they own the direction of the project. This isn’t to say we don’t guide or assist our clients in finding that direction. This is one of the many reasons we are often hired, however, when a client gives you permission to make decisions for them, they made that decision. When that’s not the case and we make decisions for the clients we are simply being lazy and bad vendors.

As a developer who practices Behaviour Driven Development I want my customers to own the scenarios that are written to drive the development of an application. The customer may physically write any of the scenarios. I may type them while sitting with the client, or during a phone call, but I am merely being a scribe. They own the scenarios. I never want the customer to feel that scenarios are written simply to translate business speak to technical speak, I want the customer to own the scenarios so its clear to them what they are paying me to build. Doing this empowers the client, it gives them ownership. They are usually much more engaged in the project when this happens.

Negative effects of failing to manage client expectations

Now, when you don’t manage client expectations you can have the opposite effect:

• hurt the relationship
• lose trust
• empower yourself, taking ownership away from the client
• increase the risk you negatively impact the clients business

Hurt the relationship

Not managing client expectations hurts the relationship. You may get away with it once, twice, or even three times, but sooner or later you will guess wrong and your customer will be ticked off. This is usually when they start looking for a new vendor.

Your customer has a feature they want added. You estimate 50 hours. It ends up taking you 110 hours. You don’t tell the client, you simply send them a bill. The customer is ticked, he asks that you stop working until the bill can be addressed. He wants to do a phone call with you to dispute the bill. Your customer is not happy.

Lose trust

Losing trust is a part of hurting a relationship, but trust is so important on its own. Most companies want to be a partner with the client. They want the client to leverage their expertise in solving a problem. If we don’t have that kind of relationship we lack the trust required for the customer to to utilize us in that way. Every time we fail to manage a client’s expectations we lose a level of trust. At some point its gone, and we’re out of the picture.

Empower yourself, taking ownership away from the client

Making decisions that affect the client’s project or business are a big no no. It takes ownership away from the client and only empowers yourself, but that empowerment only lasts a short while. You may have won the battle, but you will surely lose the war. First of all, decisions that impact the client’s project or business are theirs to make–not yours. Sometimes an emergency arises, the app is down! Chaos ensues! What to do? One of the very first things you do is call your client and give them the ability to say “no, don’t fix it”. Even though that answer may be highly unlikely, its not your decision to make, unless you have an arrangement with your client to make those decisions. Perhaps you have an agreement which covers what to do in those circumstances. If you do, more power to you. If you don’t, you may want to consider getting one.

Maybe you’re wondering what happens if you can’t reach the client? Do you wait to fix it until they call you back? I would say that depends on the nature of the issue. At minimum you should leave a voicemail and send a quick email, both which have your contact information. Doing this allows you to do everything reasonably possible to contact the client of the issue. And it may add 30 seconds to 2 minutes of overhead. This is usually reasonable. However, this is one of those times where it depends based on the relationship you have with your client. Fixing the issue first and responding later may be acceptable based on your arrangement. My belief is that if that’s not your arrangement than you should be contacting your client. Well, you should be contacting them anyways–that’s just being a good vendor.

The client’s site goes down. You get a call from one of their programmers (not a decision maker or gold owner) about it. You log in, evaluate, and decide to tackle it. Some time later you get it fixed! Woot! Invigorating, wasn’t it? Then you send a bill to the client. The person who pays the bill and has decision making power for paying the bill is very upset. Why a $1,200 bill? And why wasn’t he made aware of it? He heard from his one of his programmers their was an issue, but that it got resolved, why is the vendor sending a bill?!!

Increasing risk negatively impacts the clients business

Every time you make a reckless decision on behalf of your client without having some kind of prior arrangement or relationship in place you increase the risk that you will negatively impact their project or business. These are risks that are not yours to own, they are your clients. They always deserve the ability to say “no” even if it seems highly unlikely. The only time they shouldn’t have that option is if someone’s physical health is in immediate danger, but I haven’t seen any webapps running medical equipment, handling stop lights, or coordinating the release of water at Hoover Dam.