Project Managers have a compelling duality (or triple-ality) of roles on their projects. One of the key roles is assurance of customer service throughout the project experience. It's a critical risk area and one that's often overlooked. Shortly after he wrote his landmark book, The Service Edge, I had the opportunity to talk with Dick Schaaf. He emphasized the need for corporate entities to recognize a service strategy. And the strategy needs to be deployed consistently at all levels.

As project managers, we represent one of the critical levels of customer service for our organizations. We have direct contact with the customer. We have supervisory responsibility for our resources. We produce product. We have direct contact with upper (or functional) management. All of these contacts represent both risk and opportunity. They represent risk in terms of potential failure points in the customer service experience. And they represent opportunities in terms of being able to more positively establish customer relations. We do this in an environment where our direct authority is extremely limited, which can put us in a somewhat tenuous position.

Toward that end, there are a handful of basic customer service rules and roles that we can heed along the way to improve both the customer's experience, as well as our own.

1. The customer sees what we enable them to see. In a recent service experience, the service manager regaled me with lengthy explanations as to how my appointment was lost, how his department does this all the time and how I should make sure I get the appointment-taker's name next time. He "squeezed me in," nonetheless. I would have thought the process flawless had he simply excused himself, checked on process/system availability, and incorporated me in the schedule. Customers don't need (or necessarily want) to see our internal concerns. If we want the image of high performance, we must generate that image at all steps in the process.
   
   
2. Everyone has to know what constitutes quality. A single team member nay-saying the organization can be potentially lethal to customer service. But they need to vent. Reinforce that you are the point of contact for all such venting, not the customer or the customer's representatives.
   
   
3. The product has to live up to the image. Deliverables need to reflect the same level of quality as the team and the management. In some cases, this may force the customer into a position of re-establishing what constitutes quality. If a time or budget constraint cannot be met without sacrificing quality, it's important to allow the customer to participate in the decision-making process. As project managers, we are not the sole arbiters of quality. A Halloween mask completed on November 4th is not a quality product. Even if it's beautiful, it wasn't there in time to serve the customer's needs. If you are not sure which side of the triple constraint the customer would most willingly surrender, make sure you find out.

Why the drumbeat on customer service? It's risk. And it's a risk we can readily deal with. We have direct control. We have the ability to ensure that team knows how the customer will be treated. We have the ability to create demarcations between what's acceptable and what's not in terms of team behavior around the customer. We have the ability to drill toward a consistent message of how to communicate with the customer and ensure that their needs are met (and met well).