Communication with clients is crucial if you expect to build long-term relationships that are beneficial for everyone involved. If you can't communicate effectively with your clients, there's a good chance that they will find a service provider who can. Clients want to feel heard and know that their service providers understand exactly what they need – here are four critical communication tips you can use to optimize your relationships with clients:
Always Recap
Recapping is one of the most effective ways to ensure that communication with your clients is never misunderstood or misinterpreted. When your clients send you information or questions, take the time to recap what they've communicated in your own words before providing your own personal correspondence. This will give your clients insight into how you've interpreted the information they provided you, and give them a chance to make clarifications if they feel the need. Recapping information will also let your clients know that you're genuinely interested in their thoughts and ideas.
Ask Lots of Questions
Asking lots of questions is another excellent way to make sure that communication with clients is successful. When replying to client emails, ask them questions about what they've communicated to you so you can learn more about where they're coming from. As you send communication to clients, finish up by asking a few questions about their current mindset and their thoughts about what you've relayed to them. By asking questions of your clients on a regular basis, you'll encourage them to stay engaged in the content and marketing projects that you manage for them. Each question that is asked and answered has the potential to take your clients' campaigns to a more profitable level of production.
Get on the Phone
In addition to communicating with clients through email and online databases, it's important to get on the phone and have voice-to-voice conversations once in awhile. Speaking with a client over the phone will give you both an opportunity to learn about each others' personalities and work ethics so you can better collaborate on future projects. Phone communication is effective because it allows you to express emotions that can't be interpreted in emails – it also allows you and your clients to elicit immediate personal responses from one another. Most importantly, you'll have a chance to interact instantly, which is never possible with email communication.
Send out Surveys
Sending periodic surveys to your clients will help encourage communication with each of them and give them an opportunity to voice their concerns, ideas, and suggestions so you can better serve them in the future. You should use surveys to find out what you're doing right for your clients so that you can focus on those skills moving forward. Create your own surveys using a word document, a Google spreadsheet, or a service like Survey Monkey.
These communication methods should help you stay in consistent contact with your clients and ensure that they always feel heard.
