Working with Clients: Why Your IT Solutions Don’t Satisfy Customers

We’re now facing a situation where being just a great IT specialist who can write code isn’t enough. Many freelancers can’t find orders, and when they do, the implementation often doesn’t meet client needs, leaving customers ultimately dissatisfied.
Why does this happen? The reality is that as solo entrepreneurs, we now need to be marketers, psychologists, business analysts, and project managers all at once. Technical mastery is just one tool in the set needed to create a product that actually solves business problems.
Imagine a doctor who immediately prescribes medication without asking what hurts. Absurd, right? Yet this is exactly what often happens in IT. A client says “I need a website,” and instead of identifying the real problem, we start discussing React or Vue.
What Does People Skills Give a Programmer
How did my sales background help me? The first and most important thing I learned working in tourism and then logistics was how to correctly identify client needs and offer them an optimal solution to their existing problem.
Without deep understanding of processes in the client’s company, unfortunately you won’t get a useful product, but a third leg that instead of unloading will add even more work. I’ve seen this countless times: a beautiful system that nobody uses because it doesn’t fit into real work processes.
The worst thing that can happen is when you create a “technically correct” solution that nobody uses. The client pays money, you spend time, and everyone ends up dissatisfied. And it’s not that the code is bad. It’s that you solved the wrong problem.
Client Business Analysis: Where to Start
So where do you start working with a new client? Here are several important points I highlight for myself during initial communication:
    1.    General structure of the client’s business.
How many people work, what departments exist, who’s responsible for what. This gives understanding of the scale and complexity of the future system.
    2.    End result - what the client gets as output.
Whether it’s finished products, services, or reports for regulators. Understanding the end goal helps build system logic from result to process, not vice versa.
    3.    What source data the client has.
Excel spreadsheets, paper logs, data from other systems, external service APIs. This determines where we’ll get information from and how to integrate it.
    4.    Identifying main processes in the company and their interconnections.
This is where the trap often hides - processes that seem separate are actually closely connected. Ignoring these connections leads to a system that works, but not as needed.
    5.    Processes requiring the most manual labor.
These are your points of maximum impact. Automating a process that takes 20 hours a week will have much greater effect than optimizing something that takes an hour a month.
    6.    Frequently repeated processes.
If something is done 50 times a day - it’s an ideal candidate for automation. Even saving 30 seconds per operation gives an hour saved per day.
    7.    Presence of patterns and template actions.
People often don’t realize their work consists of repeating patterns. Your task is to see them and automate.
    8.    Desired result - what the client wants to get as output.
Attention: this doesn’t always match what they actually need. A client might say “I need a CRM,” but they actually need a way not to lose customer requests.
    9.    Process analysis and optimal configuration with maximum reduction of manual work.
Here you already synthesize all collected information and propose a solution that actually solves the problem, not just executes a technical task.
Of course, this checklist is very approximate, but understanding how processes are built gives the ability to create a product for the client that will truly be useful.
Why Communication is More Important Than Code
Because communication is the foundation that often determines the quality of the product you create. Not your framework knowledge, not your ability to write clean code, not your experience with cloud services. All this is important, but secondary.
You can be a programming genius, but if you create the wrong thing for the client, your genius is wasted. Conversely - even mediocre code that solves a real problem will bring more benefit and satisfaction.
Most conflicts with clients arise not from technical errors, but from different understanding of the task. The client expected one thing, you made another, and both sides are right from their perspective. The only way to avoid this is to discuss and document all expectations in detail at the beginning.
Invest time in communicating with the client before starting development. Ask stupid questions. Double-check obvious things. Draw process diagrams. Show prototypes and mockups. Spend time making sure you understand the task the same way.
Show intermediate results as often as possible. Don’t wait until everything is perfect. Show even a half-ready prototype - it will help confirm you’re moving in the right direction.
Conclusion
Technical skills are a necessary but insufficient condition for IT success. The ability to talk with clients, understand their business, identify real needs, and propose optimal solutions - this is what distinguishes a good specialist from a mediocre one.