Resolving Client Conflicts: 3 Approaches Every Management Consultant Should Know
And apply to build a relationship of trust with clients
Management Consulting is all about making clients happy and satisfied.
If you have checked this box, you have done your job well. This is my biggest takeaway in two years of my career as a management consultant.
But no matter how prepared or experienced you are, there will be events lying beyond your control.
Below are the three approaches I use to handle difficult client situations.
1. The Situational Analysis Approach
In most instances, conflicts arise from particular circumstances.
The client’s boss said something to them and they are venting it out on you. It’s a typical pattern of frustration trickling down the corporate ladder from one subordinate to another.
But it is necessary to realize it does not make you any less talented.
I have had super sweet clients who at the time of a crucial presentation lost their calm because their leaders said something to them.
As expected, our team was at the receiving end.
But guess what, we went back to being normal in less than a day.
The idea was to:
- Listen to them and understand the gravity of the situation
- Not doubt ourselves or our work
- Deliver our best even under pressure and tight deadlines (the most difficult part)
- Get regular feedback and turn around the work as soon as possible
- Discuss with the client (once the situation normalizes) what went wrong and rectify it
- Brainstorm remedies to avoid such a situation in the future
The situational analysis approach helps because:
- Your perspective broadens
- Your relationship with the client does not go for a toss
- You become much more empathetic in dealing with them
2. The Cross-cultural approach
This is my tried and tested approach to handling clients whose culture and ways of working are quite different from mine.
The major challenges with such a client are:
- Language barrier
- Ample scope for miscommunication
- No proper alignment of expectations
As expected, this client was the most difficult to handle out of all projects so far in my consulting career.
This is how I handled the situation:
- Adapted my style and ways of working to theirs (took some time though)
- Went above and beyond the scope of my deliverables
- Took extra care to ensure all deadlines were met
- Analyzed patterns from their feedback, communication, and working style to add those elements to my work and deliverables
These clients can be difficult but your steepest learning curve will come from working with them.
3. The Negotiation Approach
This comes in handy when the client requests back-to-back changes.
Iterative rounds of feedback in consulting are not new. But when the project starts to take a different turn because of these iterations, the consulting team needs to step up.
I had a project where the client agreed upon a set of deliverables to begin with, but what we delivered and the time spent on it was nowhere close to the initial agreement.
This was how we dealt with the client:
- Put a reasonable cap on the number of iterations
- Established strong communication and set up frequent touchpoints
- Analyzed their exact needs and the context to suggest a suitable approach
- Clear communication about some requests being completely out of scope
- Being upfront about the extra costs associated with the extra scope of work
Of course, clients are valued but as a consultant, it’s your job to know when and where to draw the line. Else, you will fail to deliver quality and timely work.
You must have guessed by now my stint as a management consultant is super thrilling.
Meeting and dealing with new people from all over the globe and brainstorming with them on their challenges is exciting.
Once you get the hang of the right way of dealing with clients, it becomes easy to gain their trust, which is the backbone of a client-consultant relationship.
It’s not impossible to have bad days, but with experience, it becomes easier to navigate these rocky roads, which are an inevitable part of the journey.
