×
INTELLIGENT WORK FORUMS
FOR ENGINEERING PROFESSIONALS

Log In

Come Join Us!

Are you an
Engineering professional?
Join Eng-Tips Forums!
  • Talk With Other Members
  • Be Notified Of Responses
    To Your Posts
  • Keyword Search
  • One-Click Access To Your
    Favorite Forums
  • Automated Signatures
    On Your Posts
  • Best Of All, It's Free!
  • Students Click Here

*Eng-Tips's functionality depends on members receiving e-mail. By joining you are opting in to receive e-mail.

Posting Guidelines

Promoting, selling, recruiting, coursework and thesis posting is forbidden.

Students Click Here

Jobs

Ungrateful Clients

Ungrateful Clients

Ungrateful Clients

(OP)
Has anyone else experienced completely ungrateful clients, who seem to have no idea what we do for them and little respect for our profession?  

I don't know how many more meetings I can sit through with our clients slobbering all over the attorney and the architect (no offense architects) but never a kind word for the engineer...  and we are the ones that actually take their ill-conceived ideas and make them work.

What I am doing wrong?

RE: Ungrateful Clients

It would be a wonderful business if it wasn’t for the customers smile

Best regards

Morten

RE: Ungrateful Clients

Made me smile MortenA, a star for you.  655321 It may very well be that you are doing nothing wrong.  If you are able to satisfy the clients requirements.  I have encountered unhappy customers irregardless of whether their requirements have been met or exceeded.  Talking to the sales/marketing guy afterward brought an interesting potential insight.  "You as an engineer represent a dose of reality in the otherwise grand vision of the customer.  No one really wants an engineer around until something goes wrong.  Then you get to fix it!"

Regards,

RE: Ungrateful Clients

"No one really wants an engineer around until something goes wrong.  Then you get to fix it!"

Aint that the F#$%!#N' Truth.

I think the biggest problem is not always the client but the sales person that blows so much crap up the client's b-hind. Then as the engineer you have to try to fix something they forgot to consider or tell them it defies physics.  

I had a 2 sales and 2 people on the phone for a client wondering why something I designed could not do what the sales man said, why it cost so much, and why it was not completely design with all the small details worked out- in the quoting phase, why it was taking so long (sound familiar to anyone)...(A Dilbert cartoon popped in my head) I laughed...(not the best move)...then the salesman and client started yelling at me…dazed… and I bit my tong and just nicely…I did a lot of sweet talking and BS’ing and sugar coating the failures of the salesman.

Later I got a phone call from two of them apologizing for yelling at me and that it was a really large job they didn’t want to mess up.  I nicely told them that is why we quote things to know what can be done for what cost, and alternated options can be explored if the price is not right.

I realized, isn’t this the job of sales people?

RE: Ungrateful Clients

Gymmeh,

Yes that is why I dont like having slaes people. They think their job is to promise the earth to the client, afterall they dont have to make it work! A good sales person should manage client expectations rather than elevate them - but sadly these types do not seem to exist.

655321,

Get used to it. The respect for our profession isnt particularly high, partly because our predecessors have let engineering services become a commodity. When someone hires a lawyer or an architect, they dont pick it on price they pick one that has experience in what they want them for - not so for engineers.

csd

RE: Ungrateful Clients

Yeah, my favourite was when we got given a set of 'build to print' drawings for some tooling.  Our customer was one government office while the drawings came from another government department.  Trouble is the drawings weren't finished and definitely weren't checked for accuracy.

So we tried to spot some of the biggest problems and corrected them as best we could during build, documenting it with waivers etc.

Various people at the customer complained that the tools still didnt' work properly and took too long to make!  It eventually got smoothed out but was pretty annoying at the time.

We eventually got to design our own tooling which was a bit more fun, but not before some other people at the 'customer' tried claiming the revised design as their own, even though I'd suggested the basic idea before we tried building to their prints!

As to sales people, my last place got rid of the 'sales' team.  The managing director and heads of relevant manufacturing departments took over the non technical/build to print type work while we in the design office took over the design build/integration/technical sales.

KENAT, probably the least qualified checker you'll ever meet...

RE: Ungrateful Clients

KENAT,
I am not familiar with the term 'build to print' what does this mean?

RE: Ungrateful Clients

HAH! sales is the ONLY corporate activity that cannot be outsourced! smile (said epoisses the salesman)

655321, if your customers don't seem to have respect for your work, maybe you should just pump up the invoice!

Re customer expectations, well a good sales person hates receiving complaints from customers whose expectations were not met, because in a decent ISO9001 environment this is when the sales person gets spanked. I prefer to be on the pessimist side, but maybe that's just atypical me.

RE: Ungrateful Clients

sorry epoisses,

I mistook you for a real engineer! :)

csd

RE: Ungrateful Clients

'build to print' Basically means when you are making something to someone else's drawings without scope for changing it.  It was the term used in the UK Defence industry anyway.

Quote:

HAH! sales is the ONLY corporate activity that cannot be outsourced!  

Not so, there are companies that are just sales organizations and sell other companies products for them.  This is especially common when breaking into a new market/country.  Now for things requireing face to face meetings as part of the sales then yes, it's difficult to ship it to a different country but different company, sure.

KENAT, probably the least qualified checker you'll ever meet...

RE: Ungrateful Clients

Hmmmmmm.

I have some slightly different views from my esteemed colleagues.

1) The job of sales is actually very important. Without them to "tout" your engineeringness, you won't have the contract, to not meet, in the first place. Sales' job is acutally quick difficult. They have to somehow "gloss over" the shortcomings of engineering, in order to instill confidence in the client, so that they send their money your way instead to the competitor.

2) The client is the client. Whether he/she is happy or not is not the issue. Whether the next order comes in the door is the issue. If that means the sales guy has to do his thing, and engineering doesn't get its props, so be it.

3) At the end of the day, you get paid, your boss didn't tell you to pack up, and you go home. All in all, part of the job. N'est pas?

"Do not worry about your problems with mathematics, I assure you mine are far greater."   
Albert Einstein
Have you read FAQ731-376: Eng-Tips.com Forum Policies to make the best use of Eng-Tips Forums?

RE: Ungrateful Clients

Quote (655321):

What I am doing wrong?
You're not considering changing careers to that of attorney or architect.

"Art without engineering is dreaming; Engineering without art is calculating."

Have you read FAQ731-376: Eng-Tips.com Forum Policies to make the best use of Eng-Tips Forums?

RE: Ungrateful Clients

A good salesperson is on the side of the customer when dealing with the factory, and on the side of the factory when dealing with the customer...managing the expectations of both.  A good sales engineer is a rare, but valuable, beast.

RE: Ungrateful Clients

Well said ashereng.

[In my field of engineering/company] The sales guys have a difficult job, by not having all the info from the client (who doesn't know) at the sales stage and have to make guestimates based upon experience.

The engineers have a difficult job interpreting what the sales people have sold and also what the client wants, all within the budget.

Most of the time it works, and as the saying goes, if it wasn't difficult, anyone could do it.

RE: Ungrateful Clients

Salesmen like to sell what the client wants to buy, not just what the company makes.

Console yourself that Salesmen sell to the limit of engineering to get them out of trouble....

If you don't get all these problems to solve it is because the salesmen don't trust you to be able to solve them.

Table money is the amount of money (for bells and whistles) the customer would have spent but didn't because the salesman didn't sell them to him because...?

So the limit is, as suggested above, the laws of physics and the customers bank account. A good salesman will explore both and leave you to deliver the goods.

OK, you see the salesman as a postman delivering the goodies you make to the happy client. The client sees the salesman as Father Christmas and you as the elves out back.
If the client doesn't order, Management see the whole lot of you as expendable, the only question is, in what order (and how close to Christmas).

JMW
www.ViscoAnalyser.com

RE: Ungrateful Clients

"Salesmen like to sell what the client wants to buy, not just what the company makes."
Actually it's the client who will buy what he wants to buy, not just what the company makes. So we'd better make what he wants to buy or there will be no cash coming in. smile

655321, getting back to your feelings of frustration because of ungrateful clients: believe me (salesman AND engineer, still!), don't let your job satisfaction depend on grateful customers. Some customers think it is strategic to always whine and ask for more. Some are just to blind and obsessed with themselves to see the sh** you go through. Be satisfied with the invoice and with the next PO. If the customer is nice to have a chat or a dinner with, that's just an unexpected bonus.

RE: Ungrateful Clients

I believe that most people don't have any idea what an "engineer" does because the term is so common and varid. I dare you to ask some people what the difference is between an Operating Engineer and a Building Engineer.
For that matter, the difference between engineering fields  such as aerospace • agricultural • architectural • automotive • biomedical • ceramic • chemical • civil • computer science • electrical • engineering physics • environmental health and sanitary • geological • marine • mechanical •  metallurgical and materials • mining • nuclear • ocean • petroleum • systems • textile • and transportation. I believe the answer of respect and being grateful lies in your performance demenor and integraty and the fact that your proud to be an Engineer

RE: Ungrateful Clients

So I thought I posted this already but arguably...

They're paying you to do it, how gratefull do they need to bewinky smile

KENAT, probably the least qualified checker you'll ever meet...

RE: Ungrateful Clients

(OP)

Money isn't everything Kenat.

RE: Ungrateful Clients

lol

RE: Ungrateful Clients

Stop whinning!!! They don't pay you for that :)

RE: Ungrateful Clients

D.B. Steinman, the bridge engr, spent a segment of his career boosting the image of the graduate engineer. He combatted the use of the title 'Engr' in non-related fields. When business owners were confronted with Steinman's objections, they usually changed the name of the company.

He discovered that architects frequently gave engineers low recognition. The Empire State Building dedication plaque excluded all references to the key engineers involved, even though the project was an engineering marvel.

I have made presentations to high school seniors on the field of engineering and the types of practical solutions that engineers are capable of executing. Let's face it: engineering is not generally understood by the general population. Secondary school students study math and science, but the connection with the engineering profession is freqently skirted.

RE: Ungrateful Clients

plasgears,

Good point regarding the empire state building. I have seen plaques on many high rise buildings and they never mention the engineer.

High rise buildings are an engineering achievement, not an architectural one. The engineers work hard to get it to work whereas the architecture involved in a two storey building can be far more complex than that in a highrise.

By the way, did you realise it was the elevator that made high rises possible, before that was invented, they could build them high but nobody wanted to walk up to them.

csd

RE: Ungrateful Clients

With 72 names on there, it would be a massive insult if the engineer was not mentioned. Particularly since the building is 90% engineering and 10% architecture.

RE: Ungrateful Clients

I'm busy enough dealing with ungrateful employers, let alone ungrateful customers.

RE: Ungrateful Clients

To csd72:

But the Eiffel tower is NAMED aften an engineer - can it be any better?

The Hoover dam is actually also named after an engineer (Herbert Hoover) allthough he also became to the an US president later on.


Best regards

Morten

Red Flag This Post

Please let us know here why this post is inappropriate. Reasons such as off-topic, duplicates, flames, illegal, vulgar, or students posting their homework.

Red Flag Submitted

Thank you for helping keep Eng-Tips Forums free from inappropriate posts.
The Eng-Tips staff will check this out and take appropriate action.

Reply To This Thread

Posting in the Eng-Tips forums is a member-only feature.

Click Here to join Eng-Tips and talk with other members!


Resources