If they leave you with these open-ended questions you talk about it’s fairly natural that you end up asking lots of questions, since you get triggered automatically by the vagueness of their request, and you’ll eventually get down to something that is workable – using your skill as a professional in the process.

The tricky part can sometimes be when the solution decision process happens before you’re involved, and the customer decides themselves and asks something really straightforward of you, not really triggering the necessary questions.

You end up implementing things, without a clear vision of where the result is heading, which will lead to problems in the end.

So once again, ask more questions, especially the all important one “What do they REALLY want?” – cause the odds are you’re better at guiding the customer than they are guiding themselves.