Recently someone asked me: How would you define as a successful project? The obvious answer would have been meet the triple constraints of scope; time and budget together with the associated quality. These are success required of any project, however achieving just these criteria’s does not define project success. The key to project success is: Client Experience.
Why Client Experience some make ask? In the digital world, economy we live in where technology is accelerating at faster speed than society can catch up, client experience is crucial to be successful. Our interconnected world is fundamentally reshaping who we are – our habits, interests, and worldviews. Today is the time when human imagination and innovation are driving economic growth.
Many associate client experience with product sales; online shopping or even retail sales not with corporate world or business. Client Experience – Customer Experience defines success today. There is school of thought that even speaks to workplace experience where the team members have satisfying internal client experience.
In this article: Brian Solis - Experience is key and there will be “an Uber of every industry", he is quoted as follows:
“Experience is the sum of all engagements a customer has with you in their journey and, more importantly, their life-cycle. Any one moment doesn’t equate to an experience.”
Client Experience is about a Changed Thinking which results in a Changed Outcome to create value for our clients.
The Changed Thinking is: Every project is a customer journey you are taking a client through and design the journey so that every touch-points you engage the client and the team to ensure a positive experience.
The Changed Outcome is: At the end of the project journey the client is left with a positive emotion, observation or reaction as a result of each engagement throughout the life-cycle.
To create Client (Customer) Experience one has to manage the complete customer journey – the customer’s complete, cumulative, end-to-end journey. We need to ask ourselves two important question to create an enhanced client- customer experience:
What is the experience our clients have today?
What could or should it be tomorrow?
An enhanced customer experience, the result of a designed customer journey will be the differentiator from other providing similar project service. Designing a customer experience in projects require us to transform the way we “engage our clients” and transforming the way we “engage our teams”.
Transforming “how we engage our clients”:
- Navigate the intent through the life cycle of the project
- Respond to the changing project context
- Become a steward and a custodian of the intent of the project objective
- Share in the inherent risks & in the potential rewards
- Reduce layers & interfaces for client to manage
- Deliver greater accountability
- Partnering with clients to build deeper relationships
Transforming “how we engage the team”:
- Shape the intent of the for a clear vision of project delivery
- Incubate willingness to explore new methodology & delivery outcomes
- Nurture an environment for collaboration & mind-share for design thinking
- Mandate greater accountability for the fulfillment of the intent
- Empower technical experts to improve predictability of project execution & risk
By transforming how we engage our clients - we will enable our clients to focus on their core business and strengths and
By transforming how we engage our team - we create a path to speed and scale to enable our client to be competitive
“The only true success in project delivery is in our clients’ success”
Are our projects making our clients successful? Are we making them competitive; are we enabling them to get their products & services in time to market while they focus in their core business and strengths? These are some questions we need to ask ourselves and our team.
Firms that do not change to meet the expectation of the customers and clients of the digital age in a slow growth economy will find themselves disrupted. It will only be a matter of time.
As Brian Solis states: “There will be an Uber for every industry”