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Customer Expectation Behavior Explained

Every project in the world has a customer (either internal or external). And every project manager knows that one of the most critical aspects of a project (besides delivering on time and budget) is to handle customer expectations. If not done right, then the project could be labeled as a failure by the customer (note the word chosen: LABELED) with undesired consequences (cancellation of the project, overtime, overcosts, etc).

Yet, even as important as it is, many times they are not managed in a good way and they end up harming the customer-provider relationship a lot.

In this article, we will discuss a bit what it is and how it behaves so we can then have a clearer picture on how to manage it.

Customer expectation is basically what the customer envisions the outcome of the project will be. It is fabricated inside of his mind, therefore it is very subjective and intrinsic to each customer.

It starts forming even before the project starts, and its shape will vary throughout the life of the project. Many factors affect it in different ways: how trustful the customer is, how trustworthy the project manager feels, the customer’s own past experiences, desires, research, advices from peers, experts, deadlines, whether the he paid for it, etc.

Let’s put an example. Imagine that you suddenly realize you have to take your car to the shop on Monday morning because the breaks are failing. You accept the quotation of $500, and the car will be ready by Wednesday at the end of the day. So, that is your customer expectation: the failure will be fixed, the cost is $500 and it will take 3 days.

On Wednesday, you are about to pick up your car, and then you get the call: “The car will have to stay one more day”. What is your reaction? Your expectation was not fulfilled. And, based on many factors (your context, your personality, your knowledge on what is happening, your past experiences, etc), perhaps your reaction is quite easy-going (since you had no plans to use the car those days). But on the other hand, what if you did?.

So what was the mistake? Let’s assume the shop did not do it consciously or neglectfully. And to clarify, the mistake was not the fact that the shop needed one more day: stuff happens and you cannot predict it.

The mistake here was that the shop called you only some minutes before the deadline was reached. The shop did not manage the customer expectations (yours) correctly. If you promised X to the customer then he will expect that. Any change to that plan must be communicated to the customer, the sooner the better, and if you provide a solution beforehand, even much better.

So let’s assume the shop knew by Tuesday that the car would need one more day (due to any reason: shortage of employees that day, an overload of customers, etc). Then the right move here was to call and tell you what happened so your expectation is managed (you expected success by Wednesday, now you will have success by Thursday). Perhaps if you had proper notice, you could e.g. call and borrow your brother’s car. In the end, although you are not completely satisfied, you can at least appreciate the shop called in and took in consideration your needs and time, and now you are able to readjust your plans with more time (so you have more options at hand).

As in this example, most, even all, expectations can be classified in three “categories”: what outcome the customer will get, when will he get it, and how much will it cost him to get it.

This, as you may have guessed, is the famous iron triangle of projects: the scope (what and how will be done), the time (when it will be ready) and the cost (how much it will cost). Sometimes you can see time as schedule or cost as effort, but in the end is the same idea.

Expectations related to time and cost are tangible and easy to understand. They are expressed in absolute values and everyone knows what they are. Typically the project manager will put a buffer in the estimations for possible delays or overcosts.

On the other hand, the scope is a different beast. The scope is typically a negotiation of what the customer (says he) needs vs what the team can implement in the time and cost available. However, it is very common that the customer will not tell you the whole picture (remember that is your responsibility to obtain that, not the customer’s) so his own expectations about what will be the outcome can sometimes be much bigger from what was discussed, negotiated or even signed off.

Now that we have established what are customer expectations and how they can be classified, let’s move on to the core of the article where I will present a model that kind of describes the behavior of customer expectations and by understanding this, you can then handle them in a much more effective way.

The obvious big disclaimer: my intention is not to create an exact model in any sense, nor to convert it into scientific theory. It is a model simply based on observation and experience, and it was put in terms of a relationships, variables, and so on, to make it more durable through time so it can be explained easily and more graphically.

As the first premise of this model, I will say that customer expectations are ever growing. Every time the customer starts a new project or task that he wants it (and expects it) to finish successfully, then his expectation will grow.

Expectations will have a tendency to decrease only if, on the other hand, the customer gives up or loses interest on the project (so we will discard this scenario from this article).

Why it grows? I’m not a behavioral psychologist or anything like that, but I think it is matter of an innate optimism that can be actually traced to one cognitive bias or even two, which are Confirmation Bias and Optimism Bias. Both will trick your mind into believing that the plan you have will turn out fine (which is kind of an oxymoron, because estimations or plans are just absolutely subjective and no one can even predict one day ahead).

Do note here that these biases could also be influenced by how the project manager communicates the progress to the customer especially the unpleasent events like delays, failures, bugs, rework, etc. Transparency is key.

Second premise, the expectations grow in proportion to how much stakes the customer has on the project.

Stakes can mean tangible concepts: money, time and dependencies from it. Or it can also mean more abstract and personal concepts like prestige and honor. Regardless of what, they will simply depend on each customer and the value he assigns to them. The more value, the higher the expectation.

As third premise, we can also tell that its curve or shape will be different based on the personality of the customer. Though, let me rephrase that. Personality is a blurred concept that groups many things, so (and I didn’t want to call it like that) perhaps ANXIETY is a better term (do let me know if you find a better word!).

Some customers are flexible and show low levels of anxiety at the beginning. And, as the project progresses, the expectation pace will accelerate. This is normal as the deadlines get closer, and the budget is thinner and thinner.

On the other side, a customer expectation with higher anxiety levels probably will start already in the highs, and depending on how we handle it, then it will grow further or keep in the same level.

What is the gist from all of this? Know your customer, and anticipate what can be his possible reactions to positive or negative events.

So far we’ve seen cases where there was no intervention on the customer expectations at all. If no intervention is made, then the expectations will definitely grow. This is what used to happen with projects using traditional project management techniques and waterfall development cycles. From the inception phase of the project until the construction phase, there was no visible outcome or feedback about the product being built. Months could pass without anything tangible (besides documents, meeting notes, and prototypes), which is incredible to say the least. Would you imagine the levels of expectation on these projects?.

On the other side of the road, what agile frameworks recommend is to manage the project WITH the customer (not only for the customer) which means to have constant feedback on both sides: about project progress (outbound project to customer) and about the outcome (inbound customer to project). This is the best way to manage a project in a way that customer expectations are controlled (or you could even say tamed).

Let’s see some graphs when a periodic intervention is made.

This would be a case where you have periodic contact or touchpoint with the customer to showcase what was done, and to report the status of the project. As you can see sometimes we are able to tame the customer expectation to zero, other times it is done in a lesser degree. The important thing here is that at least it does not reach any ‘byting my nails’ level (the red line), and the project is always in check.

I would even say this is a healthy project (like any person with good health, it has some ups and downs, but nothing really bad). Do not expect projects to be uneventful or without any bugs or fails. If they are, either you overestimated your project, or it is dead simple, or a bomb is just waiting for you around the corner.

Therefore, the fourth premise is about intervention. Everytime you intervene in the customer expectation then the shape of the curve changes in a higher or lesser degree and in a positive or negative way (positive would be to decrease the expectations, and negative would be to increase them).

Let’s resume the other cases. What about those high-anxiety projects?

If you are lucky, it can result like above. Kind of handling it, never exceeding the original expectation, and hopefully falling in the end, when you deliver your project.

On the other side, and being more pessismitic, things can always go worse for any of all of these cases, which could show a graph like this:

Yet one thing is for sure, it is better to be transparent with the customer, show the problems upfront, assume your responsibility, take the hit and move forward which will produce an increase in the expectation (because failures need to be fixed, plus delivering the final outcome), than “hiding” the problems under the rug and then, when they finally surface, the hit will be much more impactful than the other case around, even harming in a deeper level the trust the customer had in the project.

At this point is where also another concept comes in hand: the circle of control. You cannot control the customer reaction, however you can influence it. I’m not recommending to manipulate or even lie to the customer. I’m just saying that there are ways to say bad news, and you can always atenuate the impact by e.g. providing an alternate solution, a new timeline, some extra effort, etc. In the end, it all comes to the the project manager’s ability and experience to manage the situation. To know how to “grab the bull by the horns”.

Well, in summary, and hopefully this is the final message you can take home from this article, customer expectations have to always to be managed.

Never assume they are managed unless you have explicit confirmation that they are.

Know your customer and try to anticipate what is his “personality” (and how his graph could look like). This way you can prepare some strategies regarding expectations and how to decrease them (perhaps having more review meetings about the functionality, having more mockups and getting feedback on them more frequently, etc). Perhaps even asking him what are his most important fears or doubts about the project can help syncing both sides.

Hope this article was useful!

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