How to reduce the risk of interaction with customers in three stages
Most recently, the project "Rating Runet" published no wonder and therefore even more sad statistics about the design of the relationship between the customer and the web studio .
Shocking facts:
This suggests that the market is extremely slow to learn from the mistakes of those who have already reached the "highest price category", and also does not understand that they do not know how to work with the risks of interaction with the client. Therefore, we decided to share lessons from the history of our company in order to help colleagues in the market (and, possibly, customers of their services) to save a certain amount of money, time and nerves.
We do not understand how to work without a contract, and why the market needs to explain this. Obvious and inexorably realized risks when working without an agreement:
This is not just a theory; it happened several times with each company that worked without contracts or with a poorly prepared contract. That is, the fact of the need for a contract was essentially confirmed by the "blood" (or rather, financial losses) of many companies.
In our contracts, the scope of work is made in an additional agreement for the convenience of making changes. We will continue to talk only about the risks arising from communication errors and interaction with the client.
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The most important points that we have added to our contracts during the existence of the company were realized by bitter experience - behind each of them is one or several "problem" projects. Let's talk about some of them.
Because of this, a pre-project estimate of the cost of work may differ by an order of magnitude from the real value of what the company sells under pressure from the client's customers and “like you promised to do this and that” type.
A design with “Lorem ipsum” and texts from Yandex.Referents does not solve business problems (this is a topic for another conversation, but it is). “Collect a site for us, and we will fill it later” - does not work. As a result of such a concession to the light, a stillborn site appears on which content will never appear (unless, of course, you have fenced yourself from its creation with a past item for free).
The site is ready, tested, but it does not take (and does not pay for) six months. The introduction of such an item helps a little straighten cashflow:
The most important word in legal bills is “written.”
Each company after a period of euphoria from the introduction of contractual relations goes through a period of understanding that the contract itself is not a panacea. It turns out that it is not enough just to fence yourself from the client from all sides, as if from an enemy.
Why the contract does not always work:
So, as soon as we moved away from the task of life support and returned to the task of increasing customer satisfaction, it turned out that it was necessary to correct the processes, and not just the documents.
The main communicative risk is related to the fact that the customer and the contractor do not equally understand the desired result or do not understand it at all. Yes, yes, it's about goal-setting, design, prototypes, and so on.
We singled out the design phase in our contracts back in 2006. True, then the design was reduced to writing some functional requirements, which describes the basic concept of the site, smoothly flowing into the expanded technical task. At that time, we believed that such an approach would best solve the client’s problems.
But the old scheme “Assessment of a contract for a fixed amount → Signing a contract → Design → Design → Development” still worked poorly, because it was still easy to make a mistake by an order of magnitude in the preliminary valuation. Even with the prescribed points in the contract, this had to be explained to the client and this caused him difficulties in planning the budget. The client is not guilty that we could not explain to him that he does not understand what he wants.
Therefore, in 2011 we switched to a two-stage pricing scheme:
This scheme works conveniently and flexibly, as it allows at the design stage:
As a result, the wolves are fed (the client understands what he wants, how much it costs, and how much he is willing to pay), and the sheep are intact (the performer does not “fall” on the obligation to work at a loss to close the consequences of inaccurate project appraisal). And another very important point - in the design process you can convince the client that you are really good at work and get +100 to loyalty. Maybe the other way around, an understanding will come that further cooperation is uncomfortable to you, and you will disperse with minimal losses on both sides.
Alas, even the correct contract and design is not enough when working with large and complex customers. Therefore, we have introduced a new tool that is relevant for working with those clients where the project manager and the decision maker are two different people. These are usually large or medium-sized companies, and all of our customers, without exception, have been among such customers for several years.
Even despite the fact that we have highlighted the design stage, there remain high risks associated with the fact that the project manager understands everything, and the decision maker does not understand anything.
Classical life situation: the client manager understands everything, signs everything, agrees with everything, always nods his head, mutual understanding ... The agency manager is relaxed, he has got an ideal client ...
And suddenly, at the design creation stage, it turns out that the decision maker did not withdraw from the process in general, he just asked him to include it at the “design creation stage”, because “he doesn’t want to prescribe something and read the documentation and problem solving methods, but the main page The site is the face of the company. ”
And when the design is already done, it turns out that the client manager forgot to register a number of tasks for the site or a couple of target groups. Yes, we are covered by the contract from all sides, but again the question of customer satisfaction arises.
Therefore, now in the sales process, we pronounce with the decision maker (and do not complete the sale without contact with the real decision maker), and also prescribe in the contract that the contract work does not start without a 15-minute pre-project presentation to the customer, which has a 45-minute continuation for the client’s manager and all curious persons by the client.
In the pre-project presentation, we quickly and confidently tell what the decision maker should know :
In fact, besides the fact that we prescribe all moments of communication in the contract (by the way, including the fact that email correspondence is official correspondence), we now pronounce them not only with the client’s manager , but also with the decision maker . Sometimes surprising facts of a decision maker's ignorance about key stages of the process are revealed, which tells us that the tool is really useful.
What is even more interesting, in the course of a presentation, quite often, the decision maker with a crunch begins to break off the pattern of understanding what a site is. Having correctly built the presentation, you can get another +100 to loyalty. This happens because the client understands the scale and complexity of the work that you have to do.
And what next? We are working on many things that increase the efficiency of interaction with large customers, including the creation of an integrated information space with the client, not letting him into the deep "kitchen" of the project. At the same time, we are confident that even small companies can achieve a significant reduction in communication risks by purely organizational measures, without resorting to clever automation tools. The main thing is not to stop.
Shocking facts:
- 17.5% of all sites (and more than 30% of sites are cheaper than 100,000 rubles) are done without any contracts at all.
- More than 26% of sites cheaper than 300,000 rubles are made with a formal contract that serves only as a basis for transferring money.
- More than 60% of sites cheaper than 100,000 rubles is done without a technical task or according to a customer’s technical task.
This suggests that the market is extremely slow to learn from the mistakes of those who have already reached the "highest price category", and also does not understand that they do not know how to work with the risks of interaction with the client. Therefore, we decided to share lessons from the history of our company in order to help colleagues in the market (and, possibly, customers of their services) to save a certain amount of money, time and nerves.
Stage One: Contract
We do not understand how to work without a contract, and why the market needs to explain this. Obvious and inexorably realized risks when working without an agreement:
- The client does not accept the result of the work. (No, something is not right ... Let's still play with fonts?)
- Customer changes requirements. (You know, while you were doing this part of the project, we realized that we still needed ...)
- There are delays in payment. (Yes, yes, yes, we will pay, while you continue the second stage.)
This is not just a theory; it happened several times with each company that worked without contracts or with a poorly prepared contract. That is, the fact of the need for a contract was essentially confirmed by the "blood" (or rather, financial losses) of many companies.
In our contracts, the scope of work is made in an additional agreement for the convenience of making changes. We will continue to talk only about the risks arising from communication errors and interaction with the client.
')
The most important points that we have added to our contracts during the existence of the company were realized by bitter experience - behind each of them is one or several "problem" projects. Let's talk about some of them.
Clause 1. “The types and scope of the work to be performed are subject to clarification and adjustment in accordance with the Terms of Reference to this Contract developed by the Contractor, which, from the time it is approved by the customer, becomes an integral part of the Contract and its annex”.For young companies, there is a risk to prescribe in the contract the implementation of some functionality prior to its design and qualitative valuation of value.
Because of this, a pre-project estimate of the cost of work may differ by an order of magnitude from the real value of what the company sells under pressure from the client's customers and “like you promised to do this and that” type.
Clause 2. “In case of identifying during the fulfillment of obligations under the Agreement, the need to perform additional types of work not covered by the Agreement (including the work on registering the domain name of the Customer, launching the project at the Customer’s hosting site, writing texts), such works are performed by the Contractor on the basis of an additional written agreement of the Parties. ”Fighting the same risks. “And we thought that you would flood the texts,” “and we thought that you would deploy hosting,” and so on in relation to those works that are not part of your service structure.
Clause 3. “The Customer undertakes to provide the Contractor with all the requested source data and other information necessary for the execution by the Contractor of the obligations under the Contract. Such source data and information must be relevant, reliable, complete and consistent.High-quality design and design development is impossible without the knowledge of the customer’s business, its customers, the composition of its communication with consumers.
In case of violation of the provisions of this clause of the Agreement, the Contractor shall have the right to suspend the performance of work until the Customer has eliminated the relevant deficiencies of the initial information.
A design with “Lorem ipsum” and texts from Yandex.Referents does not solve business problems (this is a topic for another conversation, but it is). “Collect a site for us, and we will fill it later” - does not work. As a result of such a concession to the light, a stillborn site appears on which content will never appear (unless, of course, you have fenced yourself from its creation with a past item for free).
Paragraph 4. “In the event of the launch of the project at the Customer’s hosting site, the Parties enter into an additional agreement to carry out such works. The cost of the launch is determined depending on the parameters of the Customer’s hosting. ”Have you ever suffered from building a tricky PHP package with incomprehensible modules that run on the customer's exotic operating system, because its administrator, who assembled this server from accounting computers, cannot do this himself? If not, then it is better to include this item in the contract.
Clause 5. “If during the site health check (testing) the Parties did not have any comments and adjustments on the site’s appearance and functionality (without taking into account the content of the content posted by the Contractor on the site), the project is considered completed.”Classic: the customer played enough with the fonts in the process of working on the design. The site is ready, but it is impossible to get the decision maker (decision maker) to sign the act of acceptance. He is at the conference, then in the Maldives, then busy.
The site is ready, tested, but it does not take (and does not pay for) six months. The introduction of such an item helps a little straighten cashflow:
Clause 6. “The Customer shall, within 5 (five) working days from the date of receipt of the results of the work performed by the Contractor, sign on its part the Act of Acceptance of the results of the work performed and send it to the Contractor or submit to the Contractor a written refusal to sign the Act.The item in support of the previous one lays a specific time limit on the wording of the modifications.
If the Customer does not sign the Act of Acceptance of the results of the work performed and fails to submit a reasoned refusal to sign it within the specified time frame, the works are deemed to be properly executed by the Contractor. In this case, the Customer loses the right to make claims related to the detection of deficiencies in the work performed. ”
The most important word in legal bills is “written.”
Clause 7. “In the event of an unreasonable refusal of the Customer to sign the Act of Acceptance of the results of work performed, as well as in the cases provided for in the previous paragraph, the Contractor shall have the right to suspend further performance of work under the Contract and require the Customer to pay 100% (one hundred percent) of the cost relevant works.The nail in the cover of the mismatch of the results of work.
Clause 8. “The Contractor guarantees the Customer:Not only the customer is responsible to the performer, but also vice versa. Our contracts strictly stipulate our obligations, including with respect to the rights to the elements of work (illustrations, video, software, and so on).
- the author's originality of the result of the work performed and the validity based on the result of the copyright work performed;
- that the performance of the work and the creation of the result of the work performed under this Agreement did not violate the rights of third parties, including inalienable personal non-property rights;
- that conscientious (traditional for this type of objects) using the result of the work performed the Customer will not violate the copyright (of both property and non-property) of third parties. ”
Stage Two: Separate Design
Each company after a period of euphoria from the introduction of contractual relations goes through a period of understanding that the contract itself is not a panacea. It turns out that it is not enough just to fence yourself from the client from all sides, as if from an enemy.
Why the contract does not always work:
- Some customers (surprise!) Do not read the agreement at all.
- Even if, in the event of a conflict, you have broken the client with a contract, this will not make him satisfied.
- Sometimes the project manager reads the essence of the contract, the legal department coordinates the form, and the director signs without looking. The same director who likes to play with fonts.
So, as soon as we moved away from the task of life support and returned to the task of increasing customer satisfaction, it turned out that it was necessary to correct the processes, and not just the documents.
The main communicative risk is related to the fact that the customer and the contractor do not equally understand the desired result or do not understand it at all. Yes, yes, it's about goal-setting, design, prototypes, and so on.
We singled out the design phase in our contracts back in 2006. True, then the design was reduced to writing some functional requirements, which describes the basic concept of the site, smoothly flowing into the expanded technical task. At that time, we believed that such an approach would best solve the client’s problems.
But the old scheme “Assessment of a contract for a fixed amount → Signing a contract → Design → Design → Development” still worked poorly, because it was still easy to make a mistake by an order of magnitude in the preliminary valuation. Even with the prescribed points in the contract, this had to be explained to the client and this caused him difficulties in planning the budget. The client is not guilty that we could not explain to him that he does not understand what he wants.
Therefore, in 2011 we switched to a two-stage pricing scheme:
- For design: there is a fixed amount, which we determine before the start of work.
- And the actual development, the cost of which is determined by the design.
This scheme works conveniently and flexibly, as it allows at the design stage:
- Identify and describe all the "wishes" of the client, including those that did not exist at the stage of the sale of the project.
- Demonstrate the dynamics of change "hotelok."
- Justify the increase in the timing of the project.
- To optimize the composition and stages of development depending on the budget available to the client.
As a result, the wolves are fed (the client understands what he wants, how much it costs, and how much he is willing to pay), and the sheep are intact (the performer does not “fall” on the obligation to work at a loss to close the consequences of inaccurate project appraisal). And another very important point - in the design process you can convince the client that you are really good at work and get +100 to loyalty. Maybe the other way around, an understanding will come that further cooperation is uncomfortable to you, and you will disperse with minimal losses on both sides.
Stage Three: Pre-Project Presentation
Alas, even the correct contract and design is not enough when working with large and complex customers. Therefore, we have introduced a new tool that is relevant for working with those clients where the project manager and the decision maker are two different people. These are usually large or medium-sized companies, and all of our customers, without exception, have been among such customers for several years.
Even despite the fact that we have highlighted the design stage, there remain high risks associated with the fact that the project manager understands everything, and the decision maker does not understand anything.
Classical life situation: the client manager understands everything, signs everything, agrees with everything, always nods his head, mutual understanding ... The agency manager is relaxed, he has got an ideal client ...
And suddenly, at the design creation stage, it turns out that the decision maker did not withdraw from the process in general, he just asked him to include it at the “design creation stage”, because “he doesn’t want to prescribe something and read the documentation and problem solving methods, but the main page The site is the face of the company. ”
And when the design is already done, it turns out that the client manager forgot to register a number of tasks for the site or a couple of target groups. Yes, we are covered by the contract from all sides, but again the question of customer satisfaction arises.
Therefore, now in the sales process, we pronounce with the decision maker (and do not complete the sale without contact with the real decision maker), and also prescribe in the contract that the contract work does not start without a 15-minute pre-project presentation to the customer, which has a 45-minute continuation for the client’s manager and all curious persons by the client.
In the pre-project presentation, we quickly and confidently tell what the decision maker should know :
- Stage of work, why each of these works is necessary for the client.
- Stages of payment.
- At what points his attention is needed and why it is important for the client.
- What are the risks of full delegation to your manager of the various stages of coordination.
- Duties of the customer to provide the necessary information.
- What kind of risks are we removing with such a “complicated” scheme and why it is impossible to just draw what he likes.
In fact, besides the fact that we prescribe all moments of communication in the contract (by the way, including the fact that email correspondence is official correspondence), we now pronounce them not only with the client’s manager , but also with the decision maker . Sometimes surprising facts of a decision maker's ignorance about key stages of the process are revealed, which tells us that the tool is really useful.
What is even more interesting, in the course of a presentation, quite often, the decision maker with a crunch begins to break off the pattern of understanding what a site is. Having correctly built the presentation, you can get another +100 to loyalty. This happens because the client understands the scale and complexity of the work that you have to do.
Stages fourth, fifth, sixth ...
And what next? We are working on many things that increase the efficiency of interaction with large customers, including the creation of an integrated information space with the client, not letting him into the deep "kitchen" of the project. At the same time, we are confident that even small companies can achieve a significant reduction in communication risks by purely organizational measures, without resorting to clever automation tools. The main thing is not to stop.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/160693/
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