In my twenty-five years in professional services, I’ve seen plenty of troubled projects, dissatisfied clients, and burned out teams. And I’ve never seen a project where expectations got set perfectly during the sales process, and clients got exactly what they thought they would get.

As a consulting manager, I tried for years to align expectations during the sales process. I wanted to make sure at the start that every project was a fit for us. I believed that if we didn’t see a fit we ought to walk away and look for a client who fit better.

Things didn’t work out that way. Our drive to win business usually overpowered our desire to win good business. We took projects even when we knew the clients didn’t understand what they were asking for. Then the lack of clear expectations would show up later in the form of client dissatisfaction, and put us on the defensive.

I didn’t know what to do. I wanted to satisfy clients by meeting or exceeding their expectations. But if I couldn’t uncover their expectations early in the process, how could I meet them and have truly satisfied clients?

That’s when I turned to my friend Greg for advice. I’d noticed that Greg routinely built strong teams, pulled ugly projects back from the brink, satisfied his clients, and made money for the company. He shared with me his client satisfaction formula:

Notice that Greg defines value in terms of what the client values. When a client seems dissatisfied, many technical people work harder to deliver value - as they understand it,. They assume that the way to achieve client satisfaction is to deliver more value, so they work longer hours to deliver additional technology. And often the clients remain unhappy, because that’s not what they want.

Alternatively, you can influence client satisfaction by focusing on the denominator of the client satisfaction formula, on managing expectations.

Substituting numbers for the variables, assume that

The client isn’t satisfied. The team could try to close the gap by delivering 25% more features, or by delivering in 25% less time. But how often do our teams have reserve capacity that will allow them to over-deliver on their promises?

Another possibility is to renegotiate the client’s expectations. In many cases I’ve found it more feasible to realign expectations than to increase a team’s output.

All my experience in professional services tells me to expect breakdowns in projects.  We can’t avoid them. So instead of trying to prevent them, let’s welcome them as opportunities for breakthroughs in understanding one another.

I invite you to test this client satisfaction formula yourself. If your company has an unhappy client, go back and re-examine the assumptions you’ve made about what constitutes value in your client’s mind. See if you’re putting as much energy into connecting with your clients and understanding their values as you’re putting into delivery. See what new possibilities for achieving client satisfaction come to light.