How to convey bad news to clients?

Question

How to convey a bad news to the client?

Answer 1

What type of bad news?

People in general like to break bad news by stating that the corrections / new timelines will be in place much earlier than we truely can accomplish. Be honest up front and dont give false hope. One instance of bad news is enough... no need to create new promises that you cant keep in the future.

Bottom Line: be honest to your client and yourself to control expectation management.

Answer 2

With an emphasis on the solutions you propose to address the bad news.

We will not be able to have a moon controlling functionality in our system (due to ...) but we can and will deliver the weather changing module which is almost just as good for your world domination plans.

Be honest and try to offer effective and realistic solutions instead of things that'll end up being more bad news.

Answer 3

Managing your clients/bosses expectations is a great way to avoid this.

In an engineering discipline, the old adage remains true:

Under promise. Over deliver.

If you've already got the bad news, well:

• be honest and upfront about it.
• give them options about how they want you to solve it; be detailed about cost estimates.
• don't make any further promises "to make up for it". If some of your proposed solutions offer advantages down the line, tell them; but don't say that you'll add a feature at the same time as fixing the problem.

Answer 4

When something has gone wrong the client needs to know three things:

1. precisely what is wrong
2. what the impact is on them
3. what you are going to do about it

If you are not completely honest and transparent you will get found out later and will compound the trouble.

If your relationship with them is good then you probably will survive - presuming this is not completely catastrophic - but you will have to provide a decent remedy.

If your relationship is bad, then prepare yourself for them to start playing hard-ball with you on the terms of your contract.

HTH

Addendum: A good comment below about telling them as soon as possible, which I am happy to surface in this answer as requested. It reminds me of a saying "the sooner and in more detail the bad news is known, the better for everyone". As in life, so in project management.

Answer 5

"Give the bad news all at once, and the good news little by little. -- Machiavelli" :)

Seriously.. investigate damage control or remedial measures before hand. Set them up in place to make sure it doesn't happen again. Fall back to a contigency plan if needed and you have one .. Be objective, sincere, apologetic and don't play the blame game.

Answer 6

Be truthful, since nothing is more distracting than lies.

Answer 7

In addition to being honest and straight-forward about it, equally important is how you convey the news. A simple statement of "you are doomed" may be honest but improper. It is important that the customer be told all the due deligence been done by you, what (if any) are the options or workarounds available to him and propose to get together with him to find a way forward. You are not misguiding the customer but you are trying to provide him some avenues to think and the realization that you are not just throwing it all in his plate.

Answer 8

Here's a link to a short Harvard Business Review podcast entitled: Speaking Well in Tough Moments

In the podcast, they broach different scenarios in which you have to have difficult conversations.

Answer 9

post a tongue-in-cheek apology, preferably starting with Simpsons artwork

Answer 10

What I usually do is:

Good news Bad news Good news

And, for how you execute Bad news, the already mentioned answers can suffice. So, you should have 2 good news in-hand everytime OR you break one into two :)

Answer 11

First, bad news should ideally be delivered as soon as possible, even more so if there might be some sort of financial impact. Also, when you deliver the bad news you should make sure you address all of the concerns as quickly as possible, namely:

• What went wrong.
• How they are being impacted.
• How long a fix will take.
• What is being done to make sure it doesn't happen again.

How you deliver the bad news is a big subjective, but the rule of thumb seems to be that you should deliver it in person (e.g. phone call). Also, even if you don't know what is going on yet, you should at least let people know that you are aware of an issue and that you are working on it.