The Importance of Client Experience

As Maya Angelo once said – “People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

When hearing this quote, it makes me think about how important client experience (Client XP) is – no matter what business you’re in. By taking the time to create a luxury experience for your clients and making sure they get everything they need out of your products or services, you are ensuring the long-term success of your business, and creating sustainability.

Not every business succeeds in the client experience department, so it’s important to make sure that yours does. There are so many reasons that you should focus on your client experience, but here are some of the biggest benefits:

The Benefits of Creating a Good Client Experience

• Client retention: if people loved buying from and working with your business, you’ll keep them coming back for more.
• Referrals & word of mouth: the more people that rave about your business, the more sales you’ll make. Plus, you won’t have to do as much marketing because you are letting others get the word out about your business.

Now that you know why creating a great client experience is important for the success of your business, let’s get into how you can improve your client experience.

6 Ways to Level Up your Clients’ Experience & Create Raving FansQualify your leads/candidates

1. Qualify Your Leads/Candidates

No one wants to waste their time when it comes to finding leads, so make sure to ask purposeful questions on your contact form. Don’t just ask for the basic, dig deeper so you can ensure that this lead is someone that is actually a good fit and will make you profitable. Some examples of qualified leads would be:

• Maybe you only want to work with agencies and not solopreneurs. So, in this case, you’d want to ask “How many people are on your team?

• Qualify leads by their budget. When it comes to your business, you want to make your pricing very clear right from the start – I always suggest putting the price of your services on your website. This will save you and the lead time if your price is out of their budget. When you have your initial conversation, you could ask questions such as “The price of XYZ service starts at $1000. Are you prepared to make that investment?”

• Perhaps you only serve specific industries or business owners that have been in business for a certain amount of years. Whatever it is that you need to know to qualify your potential lead, add it to the contact form so that you know just from the very start if it is worth your time and their time to get on a discovery call or if it would be better to refer them out to someone else.Clear & constant communication

2. Clear & Constant Communication

As a business owner, your clients should never feel out of the loop and like they don’t know what’s going on with their project. Before you start working together, you should be clear about what the communication standards are for your business, and make that very clear to the client. Send them a welcome guide stating what your hours are, and how they can get into contact with you (email, slack, etc.)

Give them the next steps. What happens after they accept their proposal? What happens when they pay their invoice? Do they need to complete certain work before you begin their work? Make sure you communicate these specific things. A great way to ensure all of this gets to the client is to send it in a welcome guide/email or schedule a kick-off call. 

3. Set Expectations

No matter what kind of client you are working with, you should always clearly list what is included in the package your client is purchasing. We can’t stress this enough, but make sure you have a contract! Include things like what you expect from your client. Do they need to show up to meetings on time? Do you expect them to collaborate with you and respond in a certain amount of time when you need their approval? Never assume a client knows what you want them to do. Make it crystal clear so there is no confusion later on.

4. Surprise and delight

One of the best ways to enhance your client experience is by sending your client a gift. Not just any gift, think of something they would use or dig a little deeper to find out their favorite flower or coffee shop. Small gestures like this set you apart from your competition and keep you top of the client’s mind.

5. Ask for feedback

We know asking for feedback can be nerve-wracking, but it is so vital to the growth of your business. Clients can determine bottlenecks or hiccups that you might have missed because they are the ones experiencing it. Don’t be afraid to ask for their valued feedback. Sweeten the pot and offer $10 if they complete it within the first 5 days you send a feedback form. This encourages them to actually do it, and you learn how to better your business each time!

6. Streamline your process

Using a million different software’s such as Jot Forms, Google Forms, Calendly, PayPal, DocuSign, QuickBooks, etc. makes your process stressful and overwhelming. Instead, use a CRM to onboard and offboard your clients and manage all of their important documents. Dubsado is the one I love and recommend because it allows you to automatically send appointment schedulers, contracts, questionnaires, invoices, proposals, and more, all from one convenient location. This cuts down on the number of software you have to know and learn, and you’ll be much more organized working in one single space.

How will you improve your Client Experience?

Whether you are just starting out with your business, or you have 20+ years of experience, there are always ways to make your customer experience better. One thing the pandemic has taught me was that as a business owner, we always need to be prepared for anything – change happens unexpectedly and you can’t go with the flow and change some of your business practices, your business isn’t going to be sustainable.

So, if you are finally ready to take the next step to get organized, and setup your business to scale, my signature dubsado setup is right for you. I’ll equip you with the business systems you need to take your clients from being skeptical about you and your business, to wanting to tell everyone they know how amazing you are and how much you helped them!  Learn more here or contact me to get the process started today!