On Dealing with Unreasonable Customer Demands

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Some customers just don'nt (won't?) understand you don't develop custom software just for them. They sometimes think you are their corporation's IT department.

So, if a customer presents a detailed list of features, demands they be developed immediately, and then tries to extract firm commitments with specific dates for each feature, the Product Manager shall adroitly step around the trap as follows:

  • The Product Manager shall assure the customer s/he understands the  issues by paraphrasing them back and sympathizing with the customer's frustrations.

  • The Product Manager shall, in front of the customer, write the details of each issue, for posterity, inside a high-class notebook with gold gilded page edges.

  • The Product Manager shall frequently say phrases like:

    • I can see why that's important to you
    • We'll see what we can do
    • I wish we had the resources to work on all these great ideas... which two are most important to you?

  • The Product Manager shall not definitively promise a feature will be developed nor its delivery date, unless the feature is already done, tested, and due for release within the next 2 weeks.

  • The Product Manager shall also take copious notes of the entire conversation and circulate these notes to the Product Manager's boss and the customer's account team, highlighting that NO PROMISES were made.

If the Product Manager does this, the customer will often calm down and take a less adversarial approach in the future. Even better, the Product Manager won't get fired in 6 months for allegedly promising the customer something that can't be delivered.