What does the customer want?

Tom Breur

20 November 2016

The customer is always right. Well, except when he’s wrong… 

Of course there can always be a difference between what people say they want, and what they actually need. To top it off, often there is also confusion between requirements and solutions. When you sit together and try to surface needs, constraints that the solution must meet, and think about how this will add value (earn the company money$$$), soon everybody has an opinion.

These discussions can raise some tension when the customer is reluctant to “see” things the way IT believes they work. Especially when IT has the status of single provider, they may be tempted to ‘abuse’ that monopoly by ‘forcing’ their view on the poor customer. Ugly. But since many customers feel convicted to their own IT department, this kind of dynamic is not at all uncommon.

So how do you add value in this discussion, as IT provider, without resorting to blackmail? What if you honestly believe you have a “better” solution in mind that the customer fails to grasp? My personal view is that after you have given your best shot to “sell” your solution, you simply do what you have been asked for. To the best of your abilities. Hopefully by the time you have a chance to review success (or lack thereof…) after delivery, the relationship will have strengthened, and you’ll get another chance to sell your ideas. The last thing you want to do is get into a “I told you so” dynamic. That does nothing to forge a strong partnership.

Needless to say, you can’t just sit down and expect to succeed by ‘merely’ delivering what has been asked. Some critical discourse is fair and reasonable, and should be expected in a professional relationship. However, I do strongly believe that the customer should have the final say in what he wants. And then you ‘just’ go ahead and build exactly that: