Something that many consulting professionals, photographers, videographers, and middle managers are told, is that when managing client expectations, it is best to “under-promise, and over-deliver.” We have heard this so much, over and over, that this saying is recognized as its own expression—associated with its own ideology, thought process, and way of living. In the end, however, is this the best practice overall?
In an article on Fstoppers titled “Is Under-Promising and Over-Delivering Still a Good Practice?” author Anette Lusina attempts to answer this very same question. To frame her answer, Lusina turns to the research of behavioral scientists Ayelet Gneezy with UC San Diego, and Nicholas Eplay with The University of Chicago. In their research, the two hypothesized that putting in the extra effort was likely to be a wasted endeavor “despite it being a commonly shared advice across media and among peers.”
Through a series of experiments, the two researchers tested what they called “imagined, recalled, and actual promise-making.” Ultimately, while the study was able to find that people tended to place the greatest value on a kept promise than a broken one, “exceeding the promise conferred virtually no additional happiness with the promise maker.”
Lusina also points to another research paper by Omar Topalogu from Farleigh Dickenson University and David E. Fleming from Indiana State University, which evaluates under-promising and over-delivering as it pertains to customer-facing environments. This study also concluded that consistency and certainty were the statistically smartest focus for business owners.
To this, she determines that for businesses, under-promising and over-delivering translate into a statistically negligible difference in customer appreciation and satisfaction, and that delivering exactly what was promised is what results in the most satisfied customers.
Generally, both my experience and that of others are inclined to agree. But I don’t know if that necessarily means under-promising and over-delivering is an entirely bad thing. In fact, I would endeavor to say that in some spaces, it can be precisely what your counterparty needs.
Within the context of rendering professional services—be that photography, marketing, or design—under-promising and over-delivering serves the primary detriment of devaluing the creative’s work by making him or her commit more time in order to achieve customer satisfaction. To this, most professionals would posit the solution of billing for more time, which ultimately corresponds to a more proportionate rate of pay for the amount of time being committed—because that is what it is most of the time: an issue of billing. People who under-promise, and over-deliver on the amount of time they are willing to commit to a project have the issue of not honestly reporting the amount of time things actually take—which by their very nature, forces the creative into over-delivering in order to complete his promised work.
If what we are talking about are the qualitative elements of work, however, I think this is absolutely fine, and maybe not for the reasons explored by Lusina. To better understand my position, I think we should take the time to assess the difference between skill and effort. Skill is the commensurate ability and efficiency of ability that corresponds with an individual’s level of experience. Effort is the level of individualized commitment to applying one’s skills to a specified task. When tempering the expectations of a client, under-promising and over-delivering do not mean quoting fewer hours than the job will take. Instead, it means selling based on what the baseline quality of your skill can predictably provide, while applying a level of intensity to that skill to ensure that the final product exceeds the baseline quality.
I think the thing that the various critiques of under-promising and over-delivering tend to miss, is that production time is not a linear concept. In fact, the better a professional is, the faster their production time will be on various deliverables—and because spending more time doing something intrinsically makes people better, and faster, at doing it. This ultimately means that as time goes on—and as a professional gets better—a reliance on hourly pricing models begins to give way to greater reliance on value-based pricing models, or flat pricing models that are based on bundled hours. Thus, if a professional gets faster under a flat pricing model, then in theory, his or her hourly is continuing to go up. But say that the same professional, while getting faster, uses his or her difference in time to apply new skills, research, techniques, or the like to that same piece of work, in the same period of time? Even if the difference in appreciation from the client isn’t much, ostensibly, was it a waste of time the way that it is presented in the article?
Honestly, I don’t think so, and it brings me to the second reason for why it can sometimes be good to under promise and over deliver: because while the current client may not care about how much you “went to the mat” for their most recent project, your next client will. Now, I’m not selling the idea that you should kill yourself in the name of doing good work for your client—but rather, that the final product of over delivery is something that you can actively showcase as an example of your best work, where new skills can be put on display, and that ultimately can have a direct effect on the profitability of creative professionals.
Finally, there is the dimension of content—and the reason why I am willing to bring it up is that just as much as content is becoming a specialized service, for a very long time it has already been a serious business model. The thing is that within the confines of a content business model, the customer and the audience are one and the same. If this is the case, underpromising and over-delivering can be of service to the business, because it allows for them to discover what scales the best, instead of conforming their content focus around what they have promised–which can be unsustainable. Personally, I think the best approach when starting a content strategy is to not promise anything to your reader, and let them be pleasantly surprised by what you offer.
In the end, while Anete Lusina brings some interesting perspectives to the table, there is no clear-cut or linear way to definitely come to the conclusion that under-promising and over-delivering is or isn’t a good approach for businesses. At the end of the day, it is an approach to doing business that should be a part of a greater tool kit of approaches, that way: consultants, creatives, and businesses are able to best serve their customers. Be sure to read Anete Lusina’s article, “Is Under-Promising and Over-Delivering Still a Good Practice?” on Fstoppers. (info via Fstoppers) (image via Carl Heyerdahl)
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