Managing customer expectations seems to be the most important and the most difficult part for a Project Manager. Infact, meeting customer expectations is the single largest parameter to be achieved in order to the project being called ‘successful’. If the customer is satisfied with the outcome, the project is successful.

How difficult it is to manage customer expectations depends upon whether you are:

1. having a known or single customer or having a ‘market’ customer
2. having users who may not be the economic buyers

Discovering the Client

Now the difficult part is ‘How to achieve Customer Satisfaction’? The path to success goes from ‘Managing the customer satisfaction successfully’.

As a Project Manager, you need to communicate and work with the Project Sponsor and key Stakeholders from the very ‘kicks off’. The earlier it starts in the project, the better it is. Unless the Project Manager understands the customer’s requirements he would not be able to get the work done from the team. Even if he gets a deliverable done, it may include a lot of rework in the later stages.

Reason?

The Project Manager may have skipped some information or may not have documented the requirements properly. So, communication right from the initiation would help the PM overcome this rework. This would also help the Project Manager get a real feel of the Customer’s needs which in turn would provide the quality.

Here are a few pointers that a Project Manager must keep in mind in order to effectively manage Customer expectations throughout the project:

1. A Project Manager must document the requirements in a Business Requirement document. It is a very very important thing to do.
2. A PM should get it verified and signed off from the sponsor (mostly the customer) and the key stakeholders. This would avoid misunderstandings and reduce future changes and reworks.
3. He must set up meetings with the customer regularly to update him of the project status. Taking the customer’s feedback regularly is a must to-do.
4. If possible, a PM must visit the customer premises and watch the customer work in the environment where your project deliverable will be used. There may be big difference between your perception about the project and the actual requirement.
5. Some projects take on product development for users who are part of a market that cannot be identified in advance, this may be some very new concept product. In this case, a PM must plan to meet with past customers who are thought to be representative of the intended users for your new project’s deliverable. Gather the information available about your prospective customers by planning and executing market research among target customers to better understand the market and its requirements.

Feasibility Assessment

Define the project scope very clearly and precisely. Work to determine the feasibility of something to be done. Be very clear about ‘what is’ possible and ‘what is not’. If you deduce that some aspect of your project deliverable is not feasible, initiate project activities to investigate.

If your analysis and research shows that something expected by your customer is probably impossible or not practical considering the triple constraints (scope, time and cost), document why and use your data to discuss it with your stakeholders and customers to ensure that it is excluded from the scope.

Make firm commitments only to what you realistically believe that you can deliver. It is always better to ‘under promise’ and ‘over deliver’ rather doing the reverse.

Precisely Documenting the Scope

Once the Scope is decided upon make sure you document it precisely. Document and verify the scope document with the customer before the planning starts. Clearly mention ‘what is’ and ‘what is not’ to be included in the project. This would save the extra work to be done in future.

The list of things you will not deliver sets boundaries for your project, and it provides a comprehensive basis for scoping discussions with your users and customers. Meeting customer expectations also calls for the PM to setup and validate the evaluation and acceptance criteria early in the project. These criteria are applied at the end of the project to determine the success.

Bottom Line

All said and done, this is what the PM should be doing to effectively manage customer expectations.

• Have ongoing regular discussions with the sponsor, customer and the team.
• Testing your deliverables regularly and record the feedbacks.
• Regular demonstrations of prototypes, pilots, mock-ups, and intermediate deliverables; and other periodic customer interaction.

In the end, the success mantra is ‘Work closely with your customers and stakeholders’.