EPISODE 043 - Career: How do I improve customer communication in IT projects?

Michael Seidl: Welcome to a new episode of the Get Shit Done in IT podcast. My name is Michael Seidel and our topic of the day is how to improve customer communication in IT projects. And for those who are watching or following this podcast on YouTube, you might see a different angle, a different setting. So I'm trying a different setting on the videos and I literally, I really think this suits me more. So it might be the new setup for the next, I don't know, 45, 42 episodes. But for today, we might improve some angles and lighting. But I think that will be the new setting for at least the next 42 episodes. But back to our topic of the day. how to improve customer communication in IT projects. I think the first and one of the most important ones is to have regular updates on your progress, on your status, on maybe your location or when do you start working. So remember back four years when Corona hit, everyone was on site. and you say good morning, you say bye when you get a coffee and everything. But then Corona hits and nobody was talking. knows what is the consultant doing or what is my colleague doing and so on. So at least say hi in the morning, say good lunch time and say goodbye in the evening when you leave or maybe you need to go to the doctor, whatever. So make the same communication as you do when you are on site. And second one is, of course, communicate all the updates, what you did. So keep them updated. And I think it is more important than before Corona and when you are on site. So when you are remote and nobody sees you physically, I think it's very important to have an update. What have you done?

Michael Seidl: What was your maybe your goal, maybe you have problems and those is more important than the good things. So if you experience any problems, you have definitely communicate that to the customer, to your internal customer, whatever external or internal. It's for me, it's the same. So make sure that you keep the communication up and maybe improve it. compared to being on site. And do an update every day or maybe at least once a week, what you have done, what you have achieved, maybe what was the goal for this week and have you done it or not, and let the customer know where the status is. And this is one very important thing what we do here in our company, for example, because we do, I think, 70... 80 % remote work because we have international customers. We cannot visit very regularly, maybe never visited them. So we do a lot of remote work. And for me, it is really important that me and my colleagues really keep the customer up to date, keep them posted. And so they can follow the brokers and see what is happening. There's only a single doubt that maybe the customer is not happy with your work, with your attitude, whatever. Speak up and talk about because once this relationship is at least a little bit broken, I think it's very hard to repair it afterwards. So make sure if you have the feeling that there is something unspoken in your relationship. speak it out and talk to your customer and talk about that topic. That, my opinion, is very important. So second thing is listen to the customer's feedback. So if the customer maybe wants more communication, maybe every two hours, what is the status and so on, then do it. So everything what is in your power and what is in the scope, technically, of course, what you agreed with.

Michael Seidl: And you have to follow the need and feedback what your customer is asking for. And from my experience is with new customers, they might want to have a more regular update and more tighter communication or relationship. And if they know you and if they see that you're doing a good job and everything, and of course you have to do a good job. They may be losing the relationship a little bit or how often you should update them and how you communicate with them and everything. But at the beginning, of course, time listen to the feedback and maybe increase communication to the customer at the very beginning. And maybe this will be... better in the future and when you work together with a longer time for the customer. But of course, this depends on the customer. So their customers want maybe just... They're happy when everything is working. They don't want any stuff on top. And there are different customers. want to be... Just need to find the correct names in English. And also we have a nice phrase. You need to... keep them on hand. need to be nice to them, help them and keep them on the hand, maybe take their hand and help them move forward. Some customers just want to get the ship done. That's what you have to listen to with the feedback or maybe a feeling if you talk to them, everything. Also, maybe back to the first thing is talk to them, ask them what they prefer or maybe what we do is we tell them how we work and how we do and maybe they say, okay, or maybe we can improve it or maybe we can increase it or decrease it regularly. depends. Ask the customers, ask for feedback and maybe how they want to proceed with you. Okay. And the last one is, and this is

Michael Seidl: I think one of our most important rules what we have here at Automator, build long time relationship with the customer. Of course, it's good for you as a consultant because you have a regular income. Okay, that's good. But I think the second one is and the most important one, also the customer is getting a lot of good things and can improve from this long time relationship. Because when I work for customers, I see myself as an internal employee. I listen to their needs, I listen to their problems, maybe not directly related to our topic, but I listen to the problems to the topic we talk about. Maybe we can talk about how other customers are doing it. Maybe I do proactive, give them some feedback or improvement suggestions. what they can improve and what they can do better. that's, I think, a huge benefit of having long term relationship with the customers instead of those one shot projects. So we really focus and force customers to have a long term relationship. And no, we don't say no to one time projects. But usually, for example, when we sell a product, Maybe we have proof of concept. And then of course we tell them when we work together, we want to have regular appointments, we want to have a long-term relationship. And then they can decide if they don't want to do it or if they see, okay, we can agree. Maybe we have an internal team to what can solve this. But what we cannot do do, or maybe we don't want to do because we have to focus on long-term relationship, that then a customer is coming after one year and we want tomorrow a project for 10 days. That's not possible with us because we have our long-term customers and that have a higher priority. Of course, we are trying to help, but our main goal is to have long-term relationship, long-term customer relationship because that's the thing where we can really put the most

Michael Seidl: benefit into that relationship for the customer. So that's why we recommend and why we are preferring this long-term relationship. And it's also the same like in a real relationship. It is harder to build and keep a long-term relationship with your girlfriend, with your boyfriend, whatever, instead of having a boy every weekend. Okay. It's easier to have example, new customer, but it's more harder work and more effort to have long term relationship. But I think it's for both sides, it's the best to have those because of course, the consultant have regular income, but the customer have a better relation to the consultant, have improved relationship to the consultant and get more value out of those relationships. So those are three things. So we have regular updates and keep the customer up to date and connect with them. Listen to the feedback. If they want to change anything, how do you work together? Listen to them. And of course, try to build a long term relationship to your customers or with your customer. OK, so that's everything for this week. I wish you a happy Monday. Wish you a nice week. Stay productive and bye bye.