The Second Tool: The Conditions of Satisfaction

• Author: Steven B. Levy
• Date: January 07, 2015

In three preceding articles I have described the idea behind becoming a very highly valued five-tools project manager, ready to manage each of the five progress factors:

• Manage the project, starting with the project charter (discussed in the previous article).
• Manage the client, starting with the Conditions of Satisfaction.
• Manage time, starting with the Off Switch.
• Manage money, starting with budgets.
• Manage the team, starting with assigning tasks accurately.

Let’s look this month at a core tool for managing the client: the Conditions of Satisfaction.

Overview

Client or customer satisfaction, often called repurchase intent, is generally the most important long-term metric in any enterprise. How do you know for sure you’re satisfying the client? More importantly, how can you maximize client satisfaction in advance, before you measure it?

Ask the client.

Actually, it takes a little more than asking. It’s really a negotiation, since you often work from what the client wants (the moon and stars) to what he truly needs (a couple of asteroids). Then, of course, you have to deliver on those agreed needs, but the process starts with a conversation.

Satisfaction requires meeting agreed obligations for five factors:

1. Deliverables.
2. Timeline.
3. Communication.
4. Cost.
5. Critical Success Factors.

Deliverables

Deliverables are items – electronic, paper, information – that your team gives to the client or intermediary. They can include actions you must perform, such as appearing at a hearing.

Getting deliverables subtly wrong is a good way to reduce satisfaction – and you may not even realize exactly what the problem is. Therefore, it’s worth discussing deliverables with the client or client representative (or intermediary such as a corporate law department).

The first rule of deliverables is to do what you say you’ll do. You can’t guarantee outcomes, but you can promise to deliver tangible items or oral briefings as agreed. If you promise to brief the client Tuesday morning, you need to be ready Tuesday morning.

At least as important, though, as doing what you say you’re do is to do it the way the client expects it. If the client asks for an oral briefing, don’t deliver a fourteen page memo, however brilliantly argued.

Don’t list more than about three deliverables in drawing up the Conditions of Satisfaction. (Four is okay. Fourteen is not.) Keep the client – and the team – focused on the difference makers.

Timeline

Every commitment to a client, whether casual or...