In today’s episode, we will be diving into all things client experience. This is something that is always a work in progress so if you don’t feel like your client experience is where you want it to be quite yet, that is completely okay. I know even five and a half years into business I am still adding and tweaking things to my own client experience so you’re definitely not alone.
So first let’s address the obvious, what all does a client experience encompass?
The client (or customer) experience is the interactions and experiences your customer has with your business throughout the entire customer journey, from first contact to becoming a happy and loyal customer.
So from a service provider’s point of view, this starts at the way beginning at the initial discovery of you and your services, to the inquiry form to the actual discovery call, and proposal all the way to the client deciding to work with you.
So let’s break this down into stages starting with your external presence and how you put yourself out there.
This includes how you show up on social media, to your email list, on your podcast, blog, or YouTube channel. All before the potential client even lands on your website and browses through your packages and pricing.
While this isn’t the focus of this specific episode, it all starts here so my one piece of advice here is to show up every day like your ideal clients are watching because they are.
Once the client has taken a look at what you have to offer and find that it meets their current needs, the next step should be for them to fill out an inquiry form.
I use Dubsado for this and I ask the potential client a couple of qualifying questions to get a feel for them as a person.
Of course, I ask for their typical contact information like their first and last name, email address, and website. Then I ask them their ideal start date so that I can get a feel for when they’re looking to start outsourcing their podcast.
The next question is a dropdown of all the current services we offer and they can select the service that they’re interested in between podcast management, podcast launch, and a few other options.
I then include a section that provides the potential client with the minimum starting point in terms of our services and ask them their current budget so that they are fully aware before we hop onto a call together what the minimum investment is to leave little room for confusion.
Finally, I ask how they heard about us and they’re able to select that from a dropdown so that I can keep tabs on where my leads are coming from.
Lastly, I just have a text box for them to fill me in a little bit about their podcast whether they haven’t launched yet or are looking for help with their pre-existing show.
Once that form is complete, they are directed to a page that basically says thanks for submitting. We’ll be in touch shortly and then they get immediately sent an email with a link to hop on a discovery call with me.
More than 95% of the leads that fill out that form will then turn around and immediately book the discovery call.
And then I take some time to review their inquiry form before our call and then hop into the discovery call process which I’m not really going to cover here since this will be something I will be covering in next week’s episode so I don’t want to give too much away but stay tuned for next week’s episode on this.
And then once we wrap the discovery call, I craft and send them a proposal along with some notes on what we talked about during the call, and then the ball is in their court essentially at that point.
If I haven’t heard back from them within 72 business hours then I will follow up and check-in and make sure they don’t have any questions.
Once they get back to me and say they’re in, then the client onboarding process happens and personally, I think this part is super important.
I’m not going to dive super deep into this portion of the process either because I would like to do a whole separate episode on client onboarding and offboarding but basically this is where they get sent the contract and invoice and then once that’s paid they get my onboarding materials so that we can start working on their project.
Now that we dove deep into my process from potential lead all the way to client let’s talk about some ways you can elevate your own client experience.
- Have a systemized and automated onboarding and offboarding process.
I recommend getting a CRM like Dubsado or Honeybook to help you with this. Like I mentioned earlier, I will be doing a full episode on the client onboarding and offboarding process but having something like Dubsado or Honeybook will help you automate the process and not be manually sending the contract, invoice, and any other onboarding documents to your client because that wastes precious time that you could be spending working on your own business or even personally.
I would say that having something like Dubsado saves me 10-15 hours a month which is huge honestly so I highly recommend getting a CRM tool and setting it up to run on autopilot and help you onboard new clients so that you can focus on other things.
- Figure out if there’s anything that can be tightened up in your current process. – I think there’s always something we can make more efficient when it comes to our client experience. So go through the process yourself and figure out what can be improved upon and slowly start making changes. I like to add any changes like this to my Friday task list which is the day that I typically work on internal projects, specifically improvements within my company.
- Ask your current clients for feedback on what you can improve. – I’m sure at this point you’ve had a couple of clients go through your onboarding process so don’t be afraid to ask them for feedback on what can be improved. Even if your process is pretty dang good, your clients might be able to see some holes that you missed.
So I’d love to know, what first step are you going to take in elevating your client experience? DM me on Instagram at jenny.suneson and let me know.
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