Smart teams and successful agencies use project management tools to bring both their clients and teams together on one platform for better customer experience. visit, https://blog.orangescrum.com/

1. © 2011-2020 Orangescrum Research Lab, San Jose, California | www.orangescrum.com 1
How Project Management Tools Enable Improved Customer
Experiences and Relationships?
Customer Experience (CX) & relationship are crucial business drivers. Also, they are
the most significant stakeholders of your project management initiatives.
On the other hand, internal team management is equally important. And as a
business owner you will often find yourself pulled in opposite directions.
Striking balance between your customers and delivery teams (PMs, dev & engg.
teams, vendors, service providers, contractors etc.) is a tough job.
One that requires significant collaboration and transparent communication with
equal attention.
A common mistake by most agencies is not focusing enough on their customer
engagement and relationship management.

2. © 2011-2020 Orangescrum Research Lab, San Jose, California | www.orangescrum.com 2
“Once the project is signed off, they tend overly inwards. They focus on delivering
without relevant touchpoints with the client. And most of the communication is until
at the end of the project or till something goes south!”
This is exactly what you should NOT do. Ever!
Smart teams and successful agencies use project management & collaboration tools
to bring both their clients and teams together on one platform.
The intent is clear:
Absolute transparency
Better alignment with client goals
Higher customer engagement
Improved collaboration at both ends
Here is what you should know about the use of project management tools for
improved customer relationship management.
Understand Client Expectations & Clarify Scope
Having a robust scope and preventing scope creep is the most critical success factor
for your projects.
Project Management Institute’s “2018 Pulse of the Profession Survey”, 52% of
projects were impacted by scope creep.

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Scope Creep occurs when there is lack of customer engagement as well as limited to
none feedback mechanism.
This is where a project management software can help. Well defined, “Requirements
Gathering” tasks can be created and assigned to the customer for feedback.
“You can post comments, seek clarification and obtain final sign-off with all
communication and responses tracked transparently within tasks and subtasks.”
There is reduced risk of stuff getting lost in emails, Whatsapp and Skype chats or
meetings. Everything is duly recorded, reviewed and accepted as they should be.
The benefit is you are able to demonstrate utmost professionalism, stay well
organized with real attention to detail.
All of which are key requirements for clients when they look for technology partners.
You also generate confidence that adds to the autonomy in leading and delivering
the project successfully.
Internally, your teams are happy because they have their jobs cut-out with clear
requirements, you reduce guesstimates and have the required ammo to deliver with
quality.
From a business standpoint, there is no ambiguity in terms of the engagement,
pricing and the end objective.
Win-Win for all involved!
Collaborate and communicate seamlessly using Project Management
tools

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The whole concept of digitization is the need for total collaboration for timely
execution. We must always aim to achieve this.
“The USP of project and task management tools is to enable hassle free
communication and collaboration. They bring the entire team on a centralized
platform thereby reducing the need to use multiple apps. Thus, less friction, less
chaos, more focus and optimized execution.”
Options, like “Notify via Email”, auto alerts and instant notifications enable real time
communication. Add to it, in-built chats. Hence, all communication & information
thereof stay in one place.
Easy to refer, track and make quick decisions.
Continuous action keeps the clients well-informed of the progress and interested in
the success of the endeavour.
You can obtain timely customer feedback, course-correct easily and manage
stakeholder expectations in a comprehensive manner.
As a result, roadblocks if any are identified early on, stakeholders can be notified and
the required help & attention can be obtained timely to prevent unwanted conflicts
and delays.
The centralized communication stream ensures a single source of truth for the entire
project team with minimal scope of human errors.
Plus the added advantage of greater control over project execution and delivery!
Improve Customer Satisfaction Score with Project Collaboration Tools
Having streamlined the project scope and communication channel goes a long way in
improving customer relationships.
Typically a good CSAT score is the default metric to measure your customer
experience and happiness.

5. © 2011-2020 Orangescrum Research Lab, San Jose, California | www.orangescrum.com 5
Project Management tools come in handy to provide prompt answers to some of the
key customer questions:
What is the current status of my project?
Is my project on schedule and within budget?
What are the identified risks?
Are there any foreseen delays?
What are the open or high priority issues?
Detailed reports and analytics are an essential part of a robust project and task
collaboration software.
Real time and instant reports provide high-level as well as granular details of the
project. Customers and PMO can conduct efficient review meetings with crucial data
around
Resource utilization – Planned vs Actual spent hrs.
Resource Availability – how many resources, for how long, are they
overloaded?
Resource Allocation – do all resources have tasks rightly allocated?
Billable vs Non-Billable hours
Project Overview – end to end status of tasks, resources and time.
A common problems that project managers & delivery managers often face is the
lack of sharing timely reports and status updates. And this leads to a lot of
questions and repeated status update requests. Thus taking away focus from the
core tasks.
Project Management reports resolve this problem entirely. The stakeholders can
have access and review progress at their own convenience. Giving the customers a
very high degree of transparency and visibility of the true state of affairs.
The consistency in the updates, enhanced collaboration and access to real time data
significantly boosts customer confidence and trust.
Both of which are leading factors for improved customer relations and CSAT ratings.
Summary

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Project Management tools are instrumental in keeping remote teams and customers
in sync.
Maintaining the same understanding within a project team with members spread
across different locations and time zones is an uphill task.
No matter how much you try, stuff will fall through the cracks and information will
find its way to slip out.
Invest and utilize a robust project collaboration software to
achieve greater control over your operations
provide clarity to your teams
enable real time collaboration between teams
reduce execution hassles & chaos
offer your customers quality deliverables
boost customer confidence
improve overall customer engagement and relationship
Which project management tool have you used for end to end customer & delivery
management?
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