No matter what industry you are in, there are a few things every business has in common: Leadership, employees and customers.
Leadership provides direction, fosters morale, and can act as a guide for tough decisions. Employees are what make your company tick. The need to attract and retain employees who believe in your company’s core values and strive to provide top class service is necessary to keep your business running. But most importantly, there cannot be a business without customers or clients who need your services and want to continue to choose you over your competitors. To ensure you maintain raving reviews, consider these essential tips for delivering the best service for clients.
Proposal Q&A
Your sales team has done the hard part. A prospect is now a lead, who has a problem that they believe you can solve and now, they are looking at you for what to do next. Use this time as an opportunity to set realistic expectations of what life will look like for them as a customer. Be sure that both parties are on the same page throughout the relationship. Set and address common objections proactively as you review your proposal together. Your future customer should leave your proposal review feeling confident about the new relationship and your ability to fulfill their pain points.
Dive Deep From the Start
You’ve set expectations during the proposal review, don’t rush into the deliverables just yet. First, take a deep dive into who you are working with and plan how to help solve their pain points as a business. At Michigan Creative, this step is standard and built into our client onboarding process for every new client. Taking the time to understand and learn who your client is, their core values, pain points, successes, and more can help you gather deep insight into details that have been covered up until now.
Communication Preferences
Every client is different. Some may want to be completely hands-off, and others may want to be involved in the process. During the first onboarding meeting, we take the time to set communication preferences and expectations. Without proper communication, the relationship may not thrive and your chance of churn increases. Address communication preferences and abide by them. The client may want a weekly, monthly, or quarterly meeting to review deliverables. Maybe they want a monthly check-in but a quarterly in-depth review. You won’t know until you address the communication preferences.
Availability
At this point, your customer is confident. You both feel good about the relationship and what to expect moving forward. To really provide the best quality service for your clients, make yourself available. Being available may sound easy, but we all know how quickly calendars can fill up. Even if you don’t have an answer right away, if your client reaches out, communicate back with them. This communication shows that you acknowledge they’re contacting you and that helping them is a priority.
At Michigan Creative, we do all of these things to do our best to deliver the best quality service for our clients. These tips may help your business retain clients, which in return can be the source for referrals to more happy clients. This domino effect starts with setting expectations and continues as long as your company is working with that customer. Make it a point to deliver the best quality service to your customers or clients. Without them, you don’t have a business.
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