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The Service Difference
Creating Competitive Advantage with Superior Client Service

Managing a successful design or consulting project involves more than simply delivering excellent technical work products. This is an important reality that many project managers in our business seem to underestimate. Yet most will admit that their project problems are more likely to be nontechnical in nature. Most such problems, in fact, relate to some aspect of client service.

How important is service to the client? In one survey by Kennedy and Greenberg, published in their book Clientship, clients were asked to compare the value of service with the value of the technical expertise they receive from their design consultants. Overall, clients gave client service skills (the experience delivered) as much importance as technical skills (the expertise delivered). This is corroborated by other similar studies.

Most technical consultants don’t recognize this finding. In various surveys, they overwhelmingly point to their technical expertise as the primary source of the value they deliver to the client. This discrepancy between how clients and consultants view the value of technical services represents a tremendous opportunity for your firm to differentiate itself.  

What Constitutes Superior Client Service?

Specific definitions of great client service will vary with each client. That’s why it’s critically important to invest the time necessary to learn what your client really wants. Research and experience suggest that you will generally find that client perceptions of great service typically fall into one of four primary categories we’ll call the “Four Rs:”

Reachability. This is a coined word referring to how easy it is for the client to contact you. When your client has a problem or question, you can assume that he wants to be able to reach you immediately. That isn’t always possible, but there are steps you can take to increase your reachability. These include regularly updating your voice mail greeting to include your whereabouts, always letting the receptionist know how you can be reached when out of the office, and assigning a backup to field client questions when you are unavailable.

Responsiveness. This refers to your willingness to adapt to meet client needs. Most technical consulting firms work hard at being responsive. They readily agree to scope changes, alter schedules and shift resources, and put in long hours to accommodate their clients. But this focus is on “situational responsiveness,” simply responding to circumstances as they arise. Truly responsive firms also make systematic and long-term adaptations to better serve their clients.

Reliability. This is the quality of trustworthiness that you demonstrate to your clients. Do you consistently meet client requirements and expectations? Do you always follow through on your commitments? Your reliability defines the level of trust in your relationship with the client. Without it, you can never be a consistent provider of superior client service.

Recovery. No matter how diligent you are, you will occasionally experience a service breakdown with a client. Recovery relates to the actions you take in such situations to make things right again. This is a critical juncture in the client relationship. Failure to respond appropriately may cost you the client’s trust, and ultimately their business. But a well executed recovery can actually strengthen the relationship.  

Common Service Problems

Client service breakdowns among technical consulting firms follow some consistent patterns. Some of the most commonly observed problems:

Inadequate communication. This is the most common cause for service breakdowns. It involves clients, project managers, project team members, other employees, subcontractors, and other project stakeholders. It results in mistakes, delays, budget overruns, misunderstandings, hurt feelings, and lost clients. Improving communication is the best place to start improving client service.

Unclear client service goals. This problem starts when you fail to adequately uncover client needs and expectations. It is further complicated when PMs fail to properly communicate this information to the project team. An extremely valuable activity to help prevent such problems is to sit down with the client at the start of the project and identify his or her service expectations (addressed in the article on “Service Benchmarking”).

Project team staffing changes. Project teams that stay together through the duration of the project typically perform better than those subjected to constant staffing changes. Of course, these changes are often necessary to best allocate firm resources and maintain utilization. In this case, problems can be minimized by frequent team communication and a formal “handoff process.

Failure to keep internal deadlines. This common problem routinely leads to a frenzied last-minute push to get deliverables out the door to meet client deadlines, often at the cost of quality and harmony among coworkers. Service-driven firms display discipline not only in meeting external milestones, but in keeping internal commitments to the team.

Poorly defined standard processes or work products. Lack of consistent work processes and products results in variable quality and inefficiency. Many technical practitioners resist standardization, feeling it impedes creativity and ignores the unique characteristics of each project assignment. But in fact, well-designed standard processes free up resources needed to unleash creativity and client-specific focus.

Expectations Define the  Experience

Behind every transaction with your client are a set of unstated expectations that will ultimately determine determine how the client views your performance. Uncovering and managing expectations are crucial to delivering superior client service. It’s important to recognize the difference between client requirements and expectations:

Requirements. Stated explicitly verbally or in writing, typically in the form of an RFP, work order, or contract. Usually define specific, impersonal, and objective criteria for meeting needs and providing satisfactory performance. Most technical project managers are comfortable proceeding with only this information.

Expectations. Typically unstated unless asked. These are usually more personal, subjective, and sometimes less specific criteria for meeting needs and providing satisfactory performance. Project managers who actively seek to understand client expectations have a crucial knowledge advantage over their competitors.

Keys to Delivering Superior Client Service

Providing superior service is probably the best differentiation strategy available in our industry. Key steps to better service (discussed in more detail in future articles) include:

“Benchmark” your client’s service expectations at the start of every engagement.

Manage client service delivery activities as you do your technical work. Define tasks, responsible individuals, budgets, schedules, and performance metrics.

Routinely seek feedback from your clients on how well you are serving them.

Commit to an ongoing process of service improvement, because once you exceed your clients expectations, you raise them for what’s to come!

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