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How To Keep Client Communication Streamlined and Organized
Client communication is a vital part of any agency's daily life. Without clear communication, we don't know what needs to be done and how our clients feel about our work. Sometimes client communication can get overwhelming. Here are a few tips to help you streamline the process so that everyone involved wins!
What Does Streamlining Client Communication Entail?
While it's crucial to streamline any and all communication your digital marketing agency has with clients, the process can be a bit tricky to put in place. It's always simpler to start an account off on the right foot rather than try to fix the problems later. Streamlining can look a lot different for each agency, it really just depends on your current practices. For many, the process of streamlining client communications involves implementing a schedule, setting rules and boundaries with the clients, and giving each account a person to contact exclusively. Let's go deeper into methods of streamlining that have worked for the BusySeed team!
Create Rules About Emails
The first thing that you can do to start to streamline your client communication process is to create rules about emails. For example, if you're emailing back and forth with a client, all emails about that topic should be on the same thread. Why? Because it makes it much easier to keep track of whatever you're discussing. If your account manager is getting dozens of individual emails from a client each day, something is bound to be missed or fall through the cracks. It's understandable to create a new thread for a separate topic of discussion, but there's no excuse for sending independent emails asking for revisions on the same item of work. Not only can things get lost, it's confusing to keep the order right as to what the actual final decision is. In an email thread, you can see all responses in chronological order which alleviates this problem.
In addition to telling clients to stick to a single thread, it's crucial to request that emails be comprehensive and as detailed as possible. Some clients have a tendency to email the same way you might text; send one thought at a time back to back. Suddenly the account manager has 30 emails to go through when it could have been just one organized list! Many clients request email as their main form of communication. That's completely fine, but you need to set the expectations about your agency's communication guidelines. Do you require certain people to be CC'ed on all emails? Do you only check your inbox x-number of times per day? Do you have a preferred way to write subjects so that you know what you're about to open? You can make those rules for yourself, but it's critical to clearly explain them to your clients to avoid a full inbox and a very confused and flustered team.
Schedule Communication From The Beginning
Another way to streamline your client communication process is to schedule meeting times from the very beginning of the account. If you set the standard of regular communication, it's harder for the client to fall behind. In-person, video, or phone meetings are always more effective than emails, so try to encourage clients to rely more heavily on their scheduled meetings. In meetings, you are able to create a free-flowing, real-time dialogue to ask clarifying questions, comment on revision requests, or generally solve problems. For most of BusySeed's clients, we create a weekly or bi-weekly meeting schedule. They don't need to be long, an hour is usually sufficient. Stress the importance of these meetings to encourage your clients to speak to you directly during those times rather than sending millions of emails. Make it simple for clients to request meeting times by using a calendar system. While client communication should be one of your digital marketing agency's top priorities, be sure to avoid falling into the trap of allowing too many meetings. Meetings aren't meant to totally replace emails, they're just better for the big/important stuff. Your availability and flexibility for meetings will depend on your current load and number of employees. Try not to make exceptions to your business hours unless there's a real emergency. If you don't have a big staff but you're always making them available to the clients, we can promise that some accounts will take advantage of it. Any additional meetings is a favor to your client, so don't feel bad for asking them to hold off for a day or two!
Create a Shared Folder So That Any Assets Can Be Shared Easily and Without a Middleman
One of the things that we do that saves us a lot of client communication is creating shared folders in our Google Drive. Each of our clients gets their own folder when they join our family. If they have assets to give us including photos, videos, brand guides, or other useful materials, we'll give them access to their folder. This way, the client can put everything in the folder without it having to go to the account manager first. We've found this extremely useful, particularly for clients who get us updated images often. They upload their content, then let us know in the next meeting or email in case our team hasn't seen it yet. When you use Google Drive, there's no need to worry about clients getting access to folders they shouldn't see. You can share each folder or file individually, choosing to let those with the link view, comment, or edit. In some cases, our clients have an internal folder that we do not share with them, and the shared folder that they are allowed to edit as they please. It all depends on your company's preferences and what you store in your client folders.
Be Sure Your Clients Have One Main Point Of Contact
Lastly, we want to stress the importance of giving clients one main point of contact within your digital marketing agency. While it's beneficial for your agency to have the names of multiple decision makers if possible, that's not true the other way around. Any reputable digital marketing agency will give you at least one client success manager per account. This is the person on the team that will handle all client communication with that account, and they are the ones who will put in more work to understand the brand and the goals of each client. Some digital agencies are so large that an account manager has only one client to focus 100% on, or others will have teams. Generally speaking, having just one main point of contact is a good idea for streamlining comms. Much like the email thread, allowing clients to talk with multiple team members can get very messy very fast. To avoid "he said she said" situation, only give them one person to talk to! At BusySeed, each account has one Client Success Manager that handles day-to-day comms. Every month or so, we like to do a check up with the Business Developer who brought on the account, but communication is limited to the CSM 99% of the time. By limiting communication to a single team member, you prevent the possibility of clients going to higher-ups or talking to someone who does not have a complete understanding of the account. It may seem like a lot for one person, but we guarantee that you'll have better communication for it!
We hope this article has given you some initial ideas for streamlining your client communications. In all honesty, no digital marketing agency has it all figured out. Emails can get lost in the abyss of the internet, people can forget about meetings, or clients may ignore your calls. We aren't suggesting that these tips will 100% fix your problems, but they're worked wonders in our own company. If you're looking for more marketing tips and tricks, be sure to check out our blog! We've helped over 300 businesses thrive online, and our team is experienced in a wide range of digital services. We are always accepting new clients, so if you're a frustrated business owner dealing with poor communication, consider switching to us! BusySeed is client-centered always, and we provide customized services to meet your needs. Call us at (888) 353-1484 to get started!
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