[thelist] losing irritated / arrogant customers off my books

[Ken Schaefer]

A client is paying you for a service and when something isn't working, even if it's outside your control, they want reassurance that:
a) you acknowledge that this is a problem that's affecting them
b) you are trying to find out what the cause of the issue is, and when you expect that they'll be able to get back to work.

This is all about "setting/managing expectations" of the client, and it's a must-have skill you want to do work for other people, especially in the consulting/services business.

Cheers
Ken

-----Original Message-----
From: thelist-bounces at lists.evolt.org [mailto:thelist-bounces at lists.evolt.org] On Behalf Of Jeremy Weiss
Sent: Tuesday, 7 August 2007 6:17 AM
To: thelist at lists.evolt.org
Subject: Re: [thelist] losing irritated / arrogant customers off my books

> > 4) most if not all the problems that occured are to do with something
> > outside of my control
>
> But he is your client, and you are in charge of making sure his stuff
> works. So therefore it really is your problem.

Really? So if I fix flat tires for a living and one of my customers calls me
to say that his transmission won't shift into 2nd gear, then it's my job to
fix it? Even if the transmission problem started when he was pulling out of
my shop, I still don't see where it falls under my responsibility. If the
client's problems are out of my control why would that be my problem? Maybe
I'm missing something, but I disagree on this point.

-jeremy