My title is a little “tongue in cheek” but I want say a few words about how we communicate with our clients. A good friend of mine once told me that in the IT world there are 3 kinds of news. Good News, Bad News and No News and you have to let your clients know all 3! It really is amazing how much your clients will appreciate this correspondence. We recently had an issue where the lack of good communication put us in a bad place with one of our clients. We were able to salvage the relationship by reporting what and how things were going and including some milestones for completion. I know that we were already doing these things internally but we failed to include the client. We made a conscious effort to communicate all of the 3 News’s!
One other process we took from our Microsoft experiences is after each meeting we provide a simple synopsis, highlighting what was covered and identify any action items to be accomplished as well as the priority. Each person that was involved in the meeting receives this email and is asked for clarification and input. This goes a long way in alleviating misunderstandings and finger pointing! The feedback from my clients is that they love it! This simple task shows competency and professionalism as well as fosters a more effective work experience.
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