Question

Personally, I’ve found that when good developers deal with clients, they often get sucked into the after-sales support process and this process has been difficult to reverse, so was just interested to hear the various strategies that developers employ in maintaining a healthy, useful relationship that keeps clients using the right person at the right time.

So do you and, if so, how do you deal with clients?

Answer 1

I’d go the opposite of what have been said.

The client is your number one information source

• Avoid intermediaries (human and technical)
• Keep tracks (not to use it against the customers, even if it can happen, but because he pays to get what he wants)
• Communicate – on your initiative – in a short regular basis but for small amount of times.
• Any doubt can be cleared asking the good questions. The guy don’t want that ? Get rid of it (even if you like it better). The guy want that ? Why not, add time and money on the contract.

You must train your communication skills

Most of what has been said here before is essentially related to the fact that programmers usually have poor communications skills. So they fall into the typical traps :

• customers give them bad info
• they waste time
• they get stressed

At the end, nobody is happy.

But with trained communication skills you will learn to direct when, how long and about what your chats will be, and so :

• Make any deal quick and nice
• Give confidence to the client
• Understands what the client wants (not what he says he wants)
• Ensure is satisfied with the answer (even if it’s nonsens for you)

Everybody will be happier : the customer will feel good and let you work in peace while you will have the information to keep working. Eventually, the resulting software will be better.

Think talking to customer is boring ? They think it too. And paperwork is boring as well, but you must do it, so do it well instead of looking for excuses.