Discover this week's #AskTheCEO episode and learn how to deal with difficult clients. Where people work together problems can and most certainly will occur. Good resources are needed when dealing with difficult clients in complex environments.
Everyone knows them, who works with clients had them, we are speaking about the difficult ones. When a client relationship has turned into a state of “difficult” work will most certainly become stressful, and productivity drops. Today we’ll examine some important waypoints on the customer’s journey starting with the right onboarding, handling difficult situations in complex circumstances, getting to the core of problems up to a consensual termination of the business relation.
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💡 QUESTIONS AND VIEWS HIGHLIGHTED IN THIS EPISODE:
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♨ EXCERPTS YOU MIGHT WANT TO JUMP IN
00:00 Intro
01:50 Getting started with a new client the right way
04:45 Setting the right expectations
06:57 Hiding or confronting difficulties?
13:20 De-escalation and getting back to a common ground
20:32 Ending client relationships in a good way
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#DifficultClients #HandlingClients #ClientLifecycle #flashhub #virtualfrontier #remotework #virtualteams #MadeOnZencastr
Dani Guaper
Probably on the other side. The customer has maybe expectations that can be fulfilled at this constellation or there's something that is not working as expected. Hello there and welcome to our new as the CEO Q and A session here at the Virtual Frontier. Today's topic of our Q and A session is how to handle difficult clients and enjoy work. Everyone knows them who works with clients at them. We are speaking about the difficult ones. When a client relationship has turned into a state of difficult work will most certainly become stressful and productivity drops. Today we'll examine some important waypoints on a customer's journey starting with the right onboarding, handling difficult situations in complex circumstances, getting to the core of problems up to a consensual determination of the business relation. See you in just a flash on the other side.
Dani Guaper
Hello Manuel, welcome new session here at the Virtual Frontier, our Q and A session. Our topic today is how to handle a difficult client and enjoy work. So this is today a little bit more technical and on the day work oriented. First question, when we start to work with a new client or a new project is on boarded, what are the key elements to get it or to get a kick off right and get the things in the first place rolling in the right direction?
Manuel Pistner
I think that starts before the kick off. I think that starts during the entire journey from your marketing through your sales to the kickoff. And what happens often is if this is not aligned with marketing communicates something, sales communicate something and then the team does something else and your contract say something differently, then the root cause of typical problem is that expectations are not well set. And what I mean by that is so expectations will be set by being very clear what the client wants and how to measure if he really gets that. For example, if your client wants to win new leads online or new clients online or wants to have a website relaunch that improves the conversion rate of his traffic or whatever that is, you should be very clear how to measure that. And once you are clear on that, you should be clear on what your client gets from you because you cannot give him leads. Right? You need to build something that generates leads and you build something which is an online funnel or website or whatever your service is that then has the effect of generating leads. So you should be very clear on what the client gets.
Manuel Pistner
What is your promise? Is it a result based on a specification like how the website looks like or is it an iterative process like an agile process where you are just describing the process of interaction and the skills of the team that executes the process and that is a different thing, right? This is if you are not 100% clear about the end result which happens pretty often and what is also very important is that your client gets very well set expectations by you or your business, what is his or her role and which responsibilities this person should take and how to interact with the team. So that might all sound like a lot of things, but yes, these are a lot of things. And reality shows that if you don't get the right, then your relationship can crash really fast because clients have expectations. You don't know them, you try to please them. It doesn't work. Then the project is a mess all over the place and clients don't get the results. So everyone is frustrated. So setting clear expectations is very important in the beginning.
Dani Guaper
Yes, picking up on the expectations and the alignment, probably as a company also have expectations out of the projects and probably on the other side, the customer has maybe expectations that can be fulfilled at this constellation or there's something that is not working as expected or not possible. How to avoid that. This is something that is like a growing pile of problems and how to set it in the first place. Right from both sides of the expectation.
Manuel Pistner
So the more your offers are standardized, right? Or productized even that means you are very clear about the delivery process. You have a quality standard. You know, exactly like which deliverables your clients get, which roles you have, which KPIs you need to monitor in order to see if your team is on progress and if your client gets the result, the more you can set these expectations as you are very clear how the process goes and what you do in order to get your clients the result. If you are not clear, this is a big problem because your client isn't clear. That's why it's your client or she's your client. This is why they approach you and your business because they need an expert leading them through the process to get them the result they want. So now if the provider is not clear about that process and cannot lead the client because to be able to lead, you need to have clarity in which direction to lead and how then the problem is obviously that there is missing clarity and the service provider, you, me, whoever that is, doesn't really know how to get the client this result.
Manuel Pistner
So the more quality you want to provide, the more clarity you have in your process, in your deliverables, in the roles and how the team should work with workflows. So this is a crucial component.
Dani Guaper
So let's say the project is in process, you're working with the client. And as we work in more and more complex projects, most probably some problems will appear on the journey. Unexpected things, how to handle those problems if they probably caused internally, maybe they are from customer side or there's maybe something going off rail in the communication. Should I hide or should I confront how I should go for it in the first place?
Manuel Pistner
Yes. If you want to have a big drama in the end, it's good to hide everything because you cannot avoid that. It will crash. You can hide some small things in the beginning and then you hide the next thing and the next thing. And in the end, it's a big mess and a big crash and everything goes down. So I cannot recommend hiding anything. I believe in full transparency. And transparency starts with the process and the tools that bring the transparency to your clients and to your team. Right. And I think this is the crucial part, providing transparency over the entire process and your process and your tools, they have the purpose to bring this transparency. And then you need to know who has which accountability and decides about what. So for example, if there needs to be taken a decision about requirements, because I don't know, circumstances change shareholder have raised additional requirements. Or the clients of my clients complained because they want something else, then who needs to decide about this change in requirements? And typically it's the client because he or she owns these requirements. But when it's related to the technology or related to people in the team, then who decides about these changes?
Manuel Pistner
Right. And then typically it's the project manager in the business deciding about that. And if you have this clarity, who owns what, then it's easy to make things transparent and help those people solve the problems where they should be solved. But transparency is the first thing. And then clarity about ownership and accountability is the second thing. To avoid that situation that you hide things again and again and again because you are afraid of consequences or you have no idea how to deal with these problems, then in the end it crashes. So better make it transparent upfront and then try to find a solution as early as possible.
Dani Guaper
It's always important to get to the core of the problem. And often this is in the process. And the communication in the first place might be not really clear or somewhere hidden. And then we have also to distinguish between personal people problems or process problems. How could I get to the core of that in a practical way.
Manuel Pistner
There is a nice tool which is called the Five. Whys, for example, there is the problem, or let's rephrase that and call it symptom. There's a symptom that the client complains. So you ask, okay, why is that? And then the team says, yeah, because we have too many Bucks. Okay. So why do we have too many Bucks? Because this is just another symptom. It's a sub symptom. Right. We have too many Bucks because requirements are not clear. Or it could be that requirements are clear, but the team didn't understand them, which is another root cause. And to dig deeper by asking everyone in the team, Why? Why five times? And then it's very likely that you get to the root cause and this is what you fix. And once you fix it, the other symptoms will disappear. And if you just focus on fighting the fires like the client is not satisfied, and then you say, okay, then let's have a meeting and you try to please the client. This won't solve the problem. It would just maybe raise the mood a little bit, but the symptoms won't go away as the root cause isn't fixed.
Manuel Pistner
So you need to dig down into the root cause and then fix it to have an effective solution for all the symptoms.
Dani Guaper
Let's put it the other way around. When a customer approaches you as a company owner and says, I'm not happy with this project or I have problems with this, how should I react in those kinds of situations when I'm not a shareholder in the project, even if it's my company? And how could I support my team members to solve these situations in a good way?
Manuel Pistner
Yeah. So the first thing is that you see a complaint as an opportunity to improve one thing and to improve the relationship. The second thing so appreciate these complaints because if clients don't complain that, they just leave. You didn't learn anything right? So a complaint is always an opportunity to get something better out of that. And how to get that is by first listening and asking more and asking why and asking, how do you want that? So really understand the client and listen more than you talk. That is important. And then you bring the feedback to your team and they should come up with solution, how to improve that. Or they should do the five Y and dig deeper into the root cause to find the root cause of this problem or the symptom that they want to fix. But I want to really encourage everyone to not move the root cause of the problems to your client, saying, oh, it's the fault of my client, because then you are helpless. You cannot change your client. I mean, you can fire clients, of course, and you can attract better clients by changing your marketing. This is all in your control, but really it gives you something to your hands to improve it.
Manuel Pistner
If you just find a problem in other people, that's valid for your clients, that's valid for your team members. So I would try to work with that and find a solution. And now then there is also sometimes the case where the client behaves really like this, and they just always, in any case, point to you or team members or the service provider, and they don't want to take any ownership for anything, not even their requirements. And they just always blame other people to like, you have to do this and this is your duty, et cetera. And if there is really no way out, it's sometimes better to quit and have a still kind conversation with the client saying that our path needs to be separated because we are not fit for each other. But before you do that, I want to really encourage you to try to really find the root cause of what causes this unsatisfaction.
Dani Guaper
Yeah. So probably before breaking up, I would have a follow up question on that later on. But let's say there is some kind of escalation inside the project, in the communication, whatever. So how could I or what would be some practical steps to overcome this situation, to de escalate and bring things back on a common ground?
Manuel Pistner
I think having a conversation, listening, asking, finding the root cause and agreeing on the root cause, being very clear on the symptoms. Right. So what is causing your unsatisfaction? And typically it's either too many itproblem so the quality of delivery is not good enough or the communication is poor because there is no contact person that I can reach or the budget is exceeded or the timeline is succeeded, or there is no transparency about progress and results which could also cause unsatisfaction. So talking about that, then finding these root causes and then fixing them and really try to fix them because it helps your business improve. If you manifest this learning across the company and not just in one specific project, then it's a big win because then this complaint helped you make all other clients more happy, which makes your business more successful.
Dani Guaper
What happens? And probably this happens more and more often that we work with some kind of technology that the customer maybe knows what he wants as an outcome. But the technology behind it is so complex that maybe the customer really don't understand how it works, maybe not even the project manager or the company owner. This is really specific and complex. So how you work on those kind when they are appearing problems in this stage of a project, how you go for that? This is done in a clear and transparent way and we are not lost inside the technology as a problem.
Manuel Pistner
I would again say make this complexity transparent and try to make it transparent in a way that the client can understand that it is complex and why it is complex and how that impacts the project. And what are potential solutions to break down this complexity into smaller pieces that are easier to understand and handle. Right. But yes, that can happen. And then transparency is key. And I think if you can really articulate and show that you try to find a solution, but the circumstances are really complex. So typically I experienced two reactions. Some clients say thanks for showing that and for making that transparent. So I appreciate that you care about this and other clients might say, sorry, I don't care, you are the expert.
Dani Guaper
Probably you're not, right, not in a specific technology, but this might be solutions for that.
Manuel Pistner
And almost every work currently in the digital world is driven by technology, more and more technical systems come up and the entire subject is complex. So if you hire a marketing expert, that doesn't necessarily mean that this marketing expert knows all the technology that is involved in the marketing operations. Or if you hire a software developer, that doesn't mean that the software developer knows all software. And if you hire like, I don't know, a UX designer and a UX designer should fix something like on the website that implemented his or her design. That doesn't mean that this person can fix it because he or she also needs to understand the underlying technology and might not know that. So having systems that consist of multiple different components that are complex by itself just increases complexity exponentially, and that makes it just more complex. So there must be education around that and better in the beginning of the project. Then in the end, that's how I would handle it.
Dani Guaper
As projects are getting more and more complex documentation. And that documentation is a crucial point. Could you elaborate a little bit on the cost of documentation? And also on the benefit side, what I get out from a good documentation in communication with my client?
Manuel Pistner
Yeah, I think you can document a lot, but the question is always, is it worth the money? And that is related to your question, right? So what you can document is the requirements. And that is important not just because of the purpose of documentation, but because it provides clarity for what you as a product owner or the client wants and helps your team understand what they need to deliver. So this is important. If it's just a spoken word in a meeting, then the meeting is gone and the spoken word is also gone. And then everyone keeps something in their brain, but maybe it's not what the clients want to document the requirements. Otherwise you have shit in shit out, right? Quality assurance starts with requirements and then document the system architecture. If it is a marketing system software development system, I recommend really documenting all the systems involved in this entire big system so that you know which components do what and then document access so that you have administration access in case you want to do something on that. And I'm not a big fan of huge lines of documentation in code when you write software because the software needs to be written in a way that someone can understand it, of course, that requires time.
Manuel Pistner
You don't open the source code, look at it and say, okay, I got it. But looking at a good structured code and to the requirements together will help you understand the project better. And I'm a big fan of recording videos because when you have like Sprint reviews and in the end, when there is this review and the team presents the delivered stories implemented to the product owner or the client and you record this video, then in the video you have all the information of requirements developed by the team and this makes knowledge persistent means when there is another person joining the team, you can simply ask this person to watch the last ten videos and then get the knowledge of the last ten or 20 weeks in the project and then it's resilient. That's what I recommend doing while just per autopilot. Right. You just click the record button. That's it. So this is at zero cost. But in the beginning I would say if you document your requirements very well, you have the most important things already documented and that has a high impact on the efficiency of delivery because if the delivery in the delivery, the requirements are not clear.
Manuel Pistner
There are so many back and forth questions and then something will be presented but it didn't match the expectation. So it goes to another sprint and back and forth again. So I think requirements are not costs. I think they are an investment in a more efficient process and it saves time and money in the end.
Dani Guaper
So you have already said something about when we need maybe to break up of the customer or the client. How is this done in the right way and what should I do or how should I do it when we need to customize and go different directions? How is it done correctly?
Manuel Pistner
And probably yeah, it should still be in a cooperative way. Avoid flaming up like a huge escalation between these parties. Right. Because there's always a solution that you can find when things don't work out. But it must be a fair management for both parties, of course. And that's what I would aim for. And I would also try to take away the learnings because obviously something didn't work out. Either you attracted the wrong type of clients in the marketing and they got some expectations from your marketing that you cannot fulfill or it happened during sales or your teams are not trained to deliver what marketing and sales sold. So there is always a learning that you can use to manifest it in the business and make the business more robust for the future. This is what I would try to take out of that situation.
Dani Guaper
Okay, last question for today. Why would virtual teams be a great thing when you work with demanding or difficult clients in complex environments?
Manuel Pistner
Yeah, that's a good question because sometimes you are so deeply involved in the project and in the subject itself that it's hard for you to really see the things objectively. But what you could do if you have a virtual team and you have access to global talent, then you can ask yourself, okay, what would be a good profile of a person? I'm talking about experience and soft skills and hard skills that could help us dispatch this problem. Find the root cause. Then you hire such an outside person and give this person the responsibility to do root cause analyzes and try to give us an objective picture what is not working here and this person just gets paid for that or he is not influenced. You can even make 50 50 with your clients so there is no one sided interest and then you get an objective picture. And if you have an objective picture, typically you know when you want to find the solution, knowing the problem accounts for 50% of the solution. If you don't know the problem or you have a moving target and you have no idea what you want to fix, then it gets really complicated.
Dani Guaper
Awesome. Manuel, I think we covered some interesting points about handling different good clients or situations. Thank you very much and see you next week on our new Q Amp A session.
Manuel Pistner
Awesome. Thank you very much. Bye bye.
Dani Guaper
Bye. Bye. We hope you found this session helpful. Head back to our in-depth blog article on how to handle difficult clients and enjoy work. What did we miss in this conversation? How can we do better? You know the best. Hit us with your comments and reviews. We're happy to engage. And before you leave, hit the subscribe button. Give us a thumbs up and share this session around with your friends and colleagues. Sign up for the free Business Builder training on flashhub.io and learn more about how to scale with your business at any time. Work with global top talents and make work better. On behalf of the team here at Virtual Frontier, I want to thank you for listening. So until the next episode, keep exploring new frontiers.