Running a business 101: Treat your customer with respect

This post is inspired by a lengthy open letter blog from Ayende about his experiences with a licensing component, interlaced with my own experiences on dealing with my clients. In my day job I regularly have to talk to (potential) clients about their wishes, their problems and overall product satisfaction. So even though I don’t run my own company, I think I do have some experience with dealing with clients now and then.

Communication is the key. Communication is essential for managing your clients. Software development inherently introduces bugs, requirements mismatch and all sorts of other problems. The biggest cause of this is simply that your client doesn’t understand what you do, and vice-versa. In a development project, you should spend a lot of time on getting the intention clear: what’s the problem, and how do we intend to solve it. Notice that I explicitly avoided using the word ‘requirements’, as those (details) can change along the way.

Support doesn’t mean fixing the problem right away. What’s your biggest annoyance when the product is not working like it’s supposed to? Right. You don’t know WHAT is happening, or WHY. When a client comes to you with a problem, try to identify it and acknowledge that the issue has been recorded. Give them a real deadline (don’t fall in the ‘we’ll look at it soon(tm)’ trap!) so they know when to expect information. Also give them an indication on what you intend to have for them at the deadline. Don’t offer help if you can’t follow through!

Some people might argue that there IS NO bad publicity. Although this might hold true for some cases, usually bad publicity will haunt you. Of course you could try to categorize your clients by their influence, but aside from that being at least unethical, it’s also impossible to know how much of your performance with that specific customer will come out. The best thing you can do when something doesn’t work out is diagnose the failure as soon as possible. Don’t drag it out because you hope it ‘will all work out eventually’, because this will usually end up in you needing a massive amount of time (= money) to fix the problems if at all possible, and your client will get more and more annoyed. Even if you eventually produce what they want, the harm is already done. Your relationship with the client will have taken a lot of damage, which may or may not be permanent.

If all else fails, offer a refund. Take your loss, don’t worry too much about the money they gave (or owe) you. If it’s about a product that works out of the box (like Photoshop, Visual Studio), just offer a full refund. When it’s about a development project, try to agree how much you can deliver which they can still use. For instance, if you did a feasibility study, find out if they can reuse it when they take the project elsewhere. If your client can use it, offer it to them for part of the total sum of the project.

I think XHEO (the author of the component Ayende wanted to use) didn’t realize the amount of influence Ayende has in the blogosphere. A lot of people that read his blog are (semi)professional .NET developers which are potential customers. Thanks to his story, they will think twice before choosing XHEO components. That’s what bad manners (or perceived manners) with your customers can cause.

So remember: Treat your customers with respect, and try to help them however you can. If you can’t, try to find an acceptable solution for both so you can put the problems behind you.