How Issues Management can Make a Huge Difference to the Customer
By Raymond Posch, PMP, CPM

Back in 2001, I was a project manager for a hosting company. The project managers primarily managed the projects of moving new customers with large web sites and associated web applications into a dedicated hosting environment. Each project involved architecting the hosted solution, acquiring and installing the hardware and software, migrating the customer's web sites, applications, and content, and bringing them to full production operation. The projects usually involved a large number of people, both on our side and on the customer's side.

In December of that year, I was asked to support a large existing customer who was already fully moved in, so it was actually more of an account management role. But I think the story and lesson is totally applicable to project management.

The situation was that the customer was unhappy and had informed us that they intended to move out in 2002. I had demonstrated some skill in managing "difficult" customers, and I think the intention was for me to manage the move-out project and "manage" the customer through the interim. I was not asked to try to change the customer's mind since they had already asked for and received permission to be let out of their contract.

But I took it upon myself to find out why the customer was unhappy. And I quickly found out that the customer had a number of customer support issues that had never been resolved, and therefore they had every right to be unhappy.

I set about to manage the customer's issues exactly the same as if they had come up during the implementation project. I asked the customer to identify and explain their issues, and I captured each issue in a spreadsheet. I discussed the issues with the customer to determine how they wanted or expected the issues to be resolved, and I then discussed the issues with our technical support teams to determine what steps we could take to resolve each one and who would take responsibility for each. Some actions were assigned to me, some were assigned to other managers, and some were assigned to technical specialists.

Every week we tracked the progress of the issues and related action items. One of the issues should have been addressed during the setup and customer move-in – setting up appropriate monitoring of the applications and websites – wasn't, at least to the satisfaction of the customer, and that became a mini-project that I managed. That was a case where the customer wanted more monitoring than was in our standard hosting package, and we gave them a cost quote which they agreed to pay.

But here's the key... every week the customer saw us taking agreed-to actions and step-by-step over weeks, and in the mini-project case, two months, we resolved all of their issues. Customers understand that problems can occur, and that they may want deliverables (or services) that were not in the original scope. But they want to see a responsiveness and an ability - and, yes, even a process - to resolve issues that are a concern to them. This is just as true during a project as it is for customer support.

Well, you may guess that the customer changed their mind and stayed with us. In fact they stayed until we discontinued the hosting business 3-4 years later after being acquired by a much larger company that did not want to be in that business. While they were there, I managed a variety of infrastructure upgrade and new application implementation projects for them, and they were a great and valued customer.

Lesson learned: Never discount the importance of issues management and the importance of doing it well. And remember to include issues raised by the customer and stakeholders as well as those identified by the core team.

Raymond Posch is publisher of the Project Success Tips newsletter. See Ray's bio on our Meet the Experts page.

Filed under Issues Management