Setting Customer Expectations

I have noticed two extreme types of IT services managers out there. The first seems to be constantly stressed, works 60 hour weeks, and is up at all hours of the night resolving customer issues. They seem to be at the mercy of the customer's demands and have to meet certain expectations (usually at weird hours in the morning) to keep the customer happy. The manager's team is stressed out and many secretly apply for other jobs in the company.

The second type of IT services manager clocks a 40 hour work week. He or she checks out mentally and emotionally from the job at 5 PM and has a nice steak dinner. Occasionally, the manager may have a late night or even a weekend, but the bulk of all work gets done during normal business hours. In addition, all of the manager's team members are extremely productive, enjoy their jobs, and even volunteer for those late night "customer heroics".

Over my own career as an IT director and a consultant building IT organizations, I have found that the key difference between the two types of managers is nothing less than customer expectation setting. Those managers who are committed to setting expectations with consistent follow-through experience both peace and satisfied customers. Those managers who set no, poor, or unsustainable customer expectations have nothing but an all consuming stressful job, a team of miserable employees, and constantly frustrated customers.

Here are a few principals I have learned and apply.

Set Expectations Quickly

There is nothing more frustrating to a customer than having an inquiry go unanswered for days. If a customer has to ask twice, he or she is now frustrated. Having been in situations where I could have up to 20 inquires to me in a single day, I keep a notebook and write down every inquiry if I can't answer it right then. I don't use email folders or electronic tasks. Honestly, I have never met a successful manager who uses those tools. The most successful managers stick to a pen and notebook.

If I know I can't get back to a customer immediately, I send a 1 line email acknowledging the request, state when I will have a response, and write down the task with due date in my notebook. The simple discipline has a twofold effect: customers feel acknowledged and have a clear understanding of the next step.

Not Everything Needs to be Done Now

Our greatest assumption in customer service is to believe that customers (especially angry ones) need everything immediately and if we don't provide it to them, they will stop paying us. This is a disastrous assumption and the core of chaos in a services organization. It is true that some customers demand our attention at this very moment and we have to provide it. These instances are called "escalations" and they should be attended to if the customer has no functionality or threatens commercial recourse. Although most customers believe their issue is an escalation, most are not. As a services organization, there is only so much a team can do in a given time and do it effectively. Push those resource boundaries and the stress, overtime, and weekends start to pile on quickly.

I had a customer earlier this month tell me that she needed my team to do a significant modification to their website. I asked the customer when she needed it. She said "As soon as possible." Looking at our calendar, "ASAP" for the start of this project would be 2 weeks. I replied to her and said "We will give you our full attention and start this project in 2 weeks." She said, "Okay, great!" and the conversation was over.

The point of the story is that we should lead with setting customer expectations based on our time and resource bandwidth, not the customer's. This is the simplest way to avoid 60 hour work weeks, nights, and weekends. If the customer pushes back on us and demands more, we can reevaluate our priorities and possibly consider an alternative. From my experience, 90% of the expectations I set are never questioned by the customer.

Leave Room for Escalations

Escalations are unavoidable and they can come at any moment, causing a complete re-prioritization of all current work. Based on the previous principal, I always set expectations with customers that allow for flexibility and breathing room in our current work queue. If I have set all normal expectations correctly, we can usually absorb an escalation and still keep all other projects on track. There are times when we get hit with a second and a third escalation. These are the times when extra hours and weekend work are unavoidable. However, this extra work is the exception and not the rule. A team that has not been overworked by poor expectation setting will gladly step up and work extra hours.

The Customer may not Always be Happy

Any service organization has limits on time and resources. I have found that there are times that I simply can't accommodate all customers and some may have to wait longer than they want. Although I can't give them what they want at their requested time, what I can guarantee is total quality when I do get around to them. In addition to chaos, stress, and misery, accommodating every customer immediately leads to extremely poor quality for all customers. I always ask myself "Should I risk having all customer mad at me from poor quality or one not pleased with the fact they may have to wait a few more days?"

There have been times as an IT director that I have had 20+ requests of me on my task list that run the gamut of both complexity and priority. On most days, I walk away from my desk along with my team and we go and have dinner with our families and loved ones. Every once and a while, we are all on a conference bridge at 12 AM trying to solve a problem. When those times come, we are usually telling jokes to stay awake and we have voluntarily put ourselves in the position by setting an achievable customer expectation.