5 Ways to Improve Your Client Experience

We’ve all had bad customer service experiences. Whether it’s a waiter or a cashier, we’ve left a scenario where we are dissatisfied. That leads to ill feelings, and we may never go back to that business again. As a business owner, you never want your clients to walk away feeling dissatisfied. 

No one will be happy 100% of the time, but if you’re looking to create the ultimate client experience (and you should be), you’ll need to focus on communicating expectations. Communicating expectations is undoubtedly the key to creating a more successful client experience. Even if a client isn’t 100% happy, setting up and communicating expectations (for you and the client) means that he or she will better understand why the experience wasn’t perfect.

DELIVER GUIDES

Your design business will find much more success when you set up guides for your clients. These guides can be intro guides, proposal guides, welcome guides, and even goodbye guides. An intro guide creates a great first impression. It tells a client that you are professional and experienced enough to know what they need to know at that time. A proposal guide helps solidify your professionalism with a clear understanding of what you are proposing to design and how you will get paid for that design. Setting up expectations of payment early will help ensure you get paid or if there is an issue with payment, you have a guide to refer back to. A welcome guide sets up expectations for your process and systems you will use to help your client understand what will happen, deadlines, and more. A goodbye guide wraps up your project with that client and leaves them with an opportunity to provide feedback. Guides are the ultimate way to communicate your expectations to your clients. Consider adding a term guide to help your clients know the correct lingo.

ESTABLISH PROCESSES AND SYSTEMS

I’m a huge fan of processes and systems, so it’s no surprise that they make their way into my design business consistently. Think about your process for projects. What steps do you take? What is necessary and what is optional? If you map out your process, you can determine a timeline. Your projects may change slightly, but your process is going to stay the same or similar. If you’ve mapped it out well, you can find the systems that work for you. I highly recommend a client relationship system (CRM) and a project management system (PMS) to run your design business. With those two systems, you can automate your processes, so your clients feel like you’re working on their behalf, but the systems are running in the background without extensive effort on your behalf. Consider adding deadlines to your process to help your clients feel informed. 

UPDATE PROGRESS

Keeping clients informed helps solve many issues. Often, our clients are anxious and excited. They let that enthusiasm get out of control, so they might overwhelm you with questions. Instead, creating email templates to send automatically as the project progresses will keep the client updated without major effort on your behalf. If your process is broken into subtasks (available in certain PMS), notifications are sent per status change in even subtasks. Be careful that you’re not over-communicating or going backward, which scares clients. Consider sending out weekly updates (automated or manually). 

PROVIDE CONTACT METHODS

A friend of mine recently made a purchase that didn’t arrive. After patiently waiting, she sought information to contact the company. The phone number was disconnected, and the company’s online presence was a hoax. We’re design professionals, so that’s not going to happen to our clients, but you can see how easily a situation could spiral out of control. Clearly communicate contact methods and office hours with clients. I suggest providing more than one method but including your hours very clearly. Consider scheduling and adding time away to your schedule to help ease the fear that creeps into the client's mind. 

RESPOND QUICKLY

We know that clients usually think they are the only client you have, which is not accurate, but it’s what they believe. They expect us to respond immediately to their questions and concerns. If you want to avoid disputes and major complaints, respond quickly to their emails and calls. I suggest ensuring your response within 24-48 business hours. Consider including any fees or charges for those responses in your guides. 

We all want our clients to walk away happy with their experience. If you’re struggling to put any of these methods into action, consider a VIP Workday. In one day, I will work with you to determine what your design business needs to improve your client experience and what systems you need in place to make that happen!