Building Client Relationships as a Software Engineer

The relationship between the client and the engineering team is critical to the success of any project. The client’s needs must be understood, communicated clearly, and met. The engineering team must work efficiently with minimal disruption to meet deadlines, and there should be open communication throughout each step of the process.

However, this relationship can be hard to build as a software engineer for many reasons. There is often little room for personal connections, and the job is typically all about deadlines and making things work. Meetings are generally short, to-the-point, and not very emotional. Clients may not appreciate how challenging it is to build software, and engineers struggle to communicate this effectively.

A successful relationship will require both parties’ time and attention to ensure that everyone is happy with the final product.

This article will discuss how you can build strong client relationships as an engineer and improve your chances for success at every stage of the process.

Be a good listener and ask questions

Building a strong relationship with any client begins with active listening and asking meaningful questions. You need to understand the problem that your client wants to solve and what they expect from you. The idea is not just to know what’s wrong with their current system but to also understand what their desired solution looks like.

This doesn’t mean that they dictate how you do your job. It means that you spend time understanding their frustrations and, as the engineer, lend your expertise to bring solutions to life.

The questions you ask should be relevant and open-ended. The goal for these questions is to gain a better understanding of the frustration points for the client. Open-ended questions allow the client to provide additional context and identify the most important areas to the client. You should seek to understand the strengths, weaknesses, and primary areas of concern for the client.

Over communicate and follow-up

It’s not just about understanding your clients, you need to be able to communicate with them as well. This means that you should avoid technical jargon and aim to speak the client’s language.

Prior to the first meeting with the client, it’s important that you understand the client, their industry, and any relevant information on past projects they have completed. If you identify unique challenges, you can communicate this to the client and provide recommendations to resolve them.

After the initial meeting, you should document the meeting in a clear and concise format to share with the client. This demonstrates professionalism on your part and gives the client confidence that you clearly understand their needs. Repeat these steps all throughout the project.

Provide realistic expectations

A critical part of maintaining trust and credibility with your client is providing realistic expectations and sticking to them. When establishing milestones and deadlines, you must leverage your expertise as a software engineer.

If the scope of the project and the technical requirements seem misaligned with the client’s deadline, it is important that you communicate this to the client. You don’t want to agree to unrealistic timelines to avoid controversy and then make things miserable for the rest of the team. This only causes frustration for everyone involved.

After these initial expectations are set, you should not only meet them but aim to exceed them for the client. As the expert, you provided your input to establish realistic expectations, so you must demonstrate this with your actions.

If you encounter a problem throughout the project, you can rely on your open lines of communication with the client to discuss the challenge.

Gather feedback and implement it

Throughout each project, you should embrace feedback from the client. Receiving this feedback will do a few things for you, the client, and the engineering team. The first is that it continues to build trust and credibility with the client. By asking for their feedback throughout the project, you allow them to voice their concerns, and you demonstrate that you can implement this feedback.

Secondly, it provides valuable information for you to improve future client relationships. If a meeting went well or a member of your team provides stellar customer service, you will want to leverage this for future engagements.

You can apply this process to the entire client team, not just the primary point of contact.

Own your mistakes

Two aspects of the client relationship that are difficult to get right are accountability and owning your mistakes. Both of these are uncomfortable for most people, often ignored, and tend to cause long-term issues.

Accountability is a two-way street in strong client relationships. As part of the planning process and initial meetings with the client, they will certainly provide feedback, opinion, and guidance to help you meet their expectations. It’s important that you communicate these for your team. The client should know who to communicate with in case of an issue or emergency.

Owning your mistakes is harder than it seems. No one likes to feel that they were the one to mess something up. But, bad news doesn’t improve with time.

If a mistake is made, this is the perfect opportunity to exercise the previous points in this article. Clearly communicate the mistake with the client. Demonstrate your expertise and that you have a plan to correct the mistake. Over communicate with the client as the mistake is being corrected. Follow up with the client after the mistake is corrected.

All of these components go together in developing a strong client relationship.

Conclusion

While it takes time to develop, being a software engineer that can successfully manage and build strong client relationships is sure to set you apart from your peers, and help you develop your career. As with most positions, communication is the key to success. Over communicate with the client, your team, and your leadership, ensuring everyone is on the same page.

The intangibles, like being humble and open to constructive feedback, strengthen your soft skills as a successful engineer. Combining these soft skills with solid engineering skills sets you up for success as an engineering leader.