The Common Traps Which Can Derail Great Client Relationships

Don't get sucked into hot potato situations and blame games. Always address concerns with vigour.

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It’s obviously important to have great relationships with your clients. But there are some common reasons why relationships can falter. Here are three which tend to arise often

Hot Potato Situations

A client emails you about something difficult.

You reply with a short email about the problem.

They reply with a short email in response back to you.

And so on and so forth. These are hot potato situations.

Hot potato situations occur when people exchange information about the problem without resolving the problem.

No one wants to take responsibility for resolving the problem.

This slows projects down and frequently leads to the ‘blame game’ (see below).

Hot Potato Situations Are Opportunities To Prove Yourself

I like this advice from President Obama recently.