8 Steps to Restoring Client Trust: A Professional’s Guide to Managing Client Conflict

If you have clients, at some point you’re going to have an unhappy one. Everyone does. Successful professionals are not the ones who never have client problems, but the ones who handle those problems well. This book offers simple, effective guidelines for managing client and stakeholder conflict. These eight easy steps will help you resolve the emotional disruption, fix the problem, and strengthen your client’s confidence in you and your service. When clients complain, most of professionals want to rush right into addressing the issue that the client complained about. But in most cases, that’s the worst thing you can do. You need fix both the problem and the relationship. Too often, the problem gets fixed, but the relationship and the client’s trust remains damaged. Trust is a delicate thing, and once violated, very difficult to restore. This book provides a no-nonsense, systematic approach to neutralizing the client's negative emotions, reframing the client's understanding of the situation, and, finally proposing a solution. This easy-to-follow sequence is especially useful when tempers are flaring and stakes are high. It can make the difference between losing a client or building a deeper relationship based on trust. While this 8-step approach was designed to help geeks, engineers and analysts navigate the choppy waters of human emotion, it is a clear, cogent approach to restoring trust that has proven useful to anyone in a tricky situation.