Lately we’ve been passing an article called “Blind Promises” around the office here at Engage. It’s from the fall 2007 issue of ‘The Partner Channel,’ a magazine for Microsoft Dynamics partners, and it offers some insightful and very succinct wisdom on the problem of reflexive promises.
The problem that author Spider Johnk describes is one I’m sure all of us have faced before. A client makes a request, and before really taking the time to think through everything involved, you just say “sure, no problem.” Then when you look at your schedules, or go to the other colleagues needed to make things happen, you realize there is a problem. Maybe there’s a string of all day meetings just before the deadline committed to, or one of the people who has to sign off on the job is out of town and out of touch. Now you’re now faced with choosing between the lesser of two evils, the first choice being to drop your prior commitments, to interrupt your boss and his visit to corporate, and the second being to call back your client and sheepishly revise your promise. As Johnk says, “Either way makes you an idiot, and someone ends up using your name in a disparaging manner.”
Johnk explains that a huge part of making sure you don’t end up over-promising and under delivering, is making sure that every body involved in the project understands just what it entails before anything is committed to. That means you, your colleagues, and just as importantly your client. If getting the job down requires that your client sign off on a certain step, or give you access to their systems, or anything else, make sure they understand that their failure to do so in a timely manner will hold up the whole project.
Many people see the philosophy of “under promise, over deliver” as the answer to this sort of problem, but in some ways we’ve been discussing that this is just as bad. SRD Group, a New Zealand based consulting firm has an 2005 article that looks at some of the major fallacies behind that notion. Despite it’s age, the article does an excellent job in pointing out that under promising is just an exercise in diminishing returns, and that from a long term perspective it helps very little and may even cause some harms.
So what then is the solution. Promise what you can deliver, and deliver what you promise. There are no gimmicks here, no assuring people you can do everything and no trying to blow away their expectations. When problems and set-backs happen (which inevitably they will) and you can’t make good on delivery, let your clients know as soon as possible. Good customer service ultimately isn’t about psychological tricks and sorcery, it’s about simple Golden Rule style honesty. Take the time to listen to the customer, really think about what they need and what that will require, and then tell them honestly what you’ll be able to do, even if that honest answer is no. And if you do that then you’ll get the reputation of a man or woman of your word, something that customers value far more than blind or dishonest promises.
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