Engineering Management Institute

Stellar Client Service

Engineers Can Provide Stellar Client Service

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This is a guest blog by Tiffani Teachey

Provide Stellar Client ServiceStellar client service is the key to retaining clients. As an engineer, one might not think client service would be in an engineer’s wheelhouse, but it’s often one of the most effective ways to retain clients. Stellar client service is the key to your business and company’s success. It is a way to provide a competitive edge in the industry and help grow one’s company. The benefits of stellar client service outweigh the costs, as they will gain loyal customers who will come back for more! Below are three ways engineers can use their skill set and knowledge base to provide stellar client service:

Solving the Client’s Problems and Providing Solutions

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Providing Stellar Client Service: Engage Holistically

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This is a guest blog by Mike Burns, PE, PgMP, DBIA

customer service

As we commence a discussion about client service, I find myself reflecting on my first Engineering Management Institute (EMI) blog, “Think Big, Be Mindful.” Serving our clients and growing market share should create synergies with our individual goals and personal lives. Again, allowing us to evolve our vision as intentions, setting direction — not prescribing a destination. In this instance, we are going to set intentions by broadening our client perspective. This broader perspective allows us to avoid boundaries that might erode our individual and collective paths to success.

I thoroughly enjoy considering and discussing the complex programs and projects that AEC professionals serve. Like many of you, this enjoyment has allowed me to grow from technical roles into leadership positions with increasing business development (BD) responsibilities, realizing along the way that I am not a natural salesperson. Yet, I benefit from and continue to enjoy working with exceptional marketing, BD, and operations colleagues, who help me to refine my approach to winning work and providing stellar client services. Along the way, one of these wonderful colleagues introduced me to Heidi Gardner’s book.

Mrs. Gardner’s extended title necessitates a deeper read: “Smart Collaboration: How Professionals and Their Firms Succeed by Breaking Down Silos.” I would not suggest taking on silos as a path toward exceptional client services. However, I wholeheartedly support her guidance, which promotes zippered relationships, allowing us to avoid cross-selling gaps as we orchestrate collaborative selling objectives. Silos emerge for reasons that we need to understand, especially where Wall Street-driven performance metrics and commercialization of our products create onerous metrics for hit rates, profit, loss, and utilization. We must explore ways to incrementally feed these metrics, concurrently exposing colleagues whose breadth of knowledge and desire to grow create mutually beneficial opportunities — opportunities where our collective experiences provide a premium experience for our clients.

Like any dynamic problem, the complexities associated with artfully incentivizing internal and external clients necessitate an elegant approach. I believe that sustained stellar client services starts with a people-centric program management approach, marrying a comprehensive stakeholder assessment with dynamic communication loops throughout the project delivery lifecycle.

Step 1: Understanding and supporting your internal and external clients

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Delivering Stellar Client Service to Engineering Clients

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Stellar Client Service

Every A/E firm talks about delivering stellar client service and many deliver to that mark.  Why?  Well, before I can provide my opinion let’s set the definition for what constitutes stellar client service.

From my foxhole, stellar client service = responsiveness, collaboration, and establishment of crystal clear expectations.  Without these three elements, you will certainly not develop stellar anything, let alone client service.

Thirty years ago, I learned what delivering stellar client service was as a bus boy, then as a waiter, in a posh restaurant.  We in the A/E industry can learn a lot from the hospitality industry when it comes to client service and “delivering an experience”. From my time servicing clients on two-tops, then four-, six- and eight-tops, I learned how to gauge what our guests (i.e. clients) wanted and when.  How to read body language, how to interact with the guests to establish rapport beyond a transactional relationship, and how to ensure they left with an experience, not just a meal.

In short, I learned how to turn eating into an experience.  I also learned that when it’s done correctly, your fees (i.e. tips!) go up.

Delivering stellar client service in the A/E industry requires engineers to transform the technical act of engineering services from the technical stuff many clients don’t understand (or want to), into an experience.  This is much like the transformation of eating dinner from a biological requirement into a memorable experience.

The 6 Ingredients for Stellar Client Service

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