Managing Expectations: Working with People Who Want More, Better, Faster, Sooner, NOW!

Section 3: Policies and Practices

Communication and information-gathering know-how will help you manage expectations on a case-by-case basis. However, on an organizational level, something more is needed: an infrastructure that facilitates managing expectations consistently and over the long term. This third section concerns the policies and practices that constitute that infrastructure, with emphasis on clarifying customer perceptions of your services, establishing service standards, creating reasonable boundaries on your workload, and most important of all, building strong relationships with customers. These policies and practices will help you and your customers create a shared understanding of what you can each reasonably and realistically ...