Crafting a Client Experience: Why It's Important & 3 Key Tips
When you’re building your business, especially when you first start out, there are about a thousand things that need to be done. And the biggest question on your mind is most likely: What is most important? While it all feels important—the branding, the logo, setting up social media, getting the legal side right, establishing pricing, finding your first client—there might just be one major thing you’re not thinking about that could make or break your business: the client experience.
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What is Client Experience?
You’ve probably heard this term thrown around, maybe even attempted to create a client experience yourself, but what is the client experience and why is it so important? At its core, the client experience is anything about your process that the client themselves experiences. This often includes everything from your homepage on your website and your initial questionnaire, all the way down to the email you send at the end of the project asking for a review and feedback. If we zoom out a little though, we’ll see that the client experience is also all the little touches along the path from inquiry to final deliverable—and every bit of it influences how the client feels about you, your business, and the services you offer.
To sum up, the client experience is the process or system you have in place that guides the client through your design process step-by-step, giving them information, answering their questions, and making sure they know the boundaries and manage expectations.
Why Does Client Experience Matter?
In short, TRUST. Having an established client experience that’s on-brand, all-encompassing, and thorough instills invaluable trust in your business. The client will look at all the questions you answer before they even have them, they’ll see exactly where you are in their project, and know what’s coming next and think, “Wow, this is a real business and this designer knows exactly what they’re doing.” Which is exactly what you want.
That’s the ultimate client experience goal; to make the process of overhauling someone’s home—a typically stressful, confusing, and long process—simple and stress-free. As a designer, it’s your job to deliver a luxury service that feels luxurious in every way. It might be easy to create a home that is beautiful and organized and expresses the client’s personality, but if you have a clunky communication system in place, or if your client feels like they’re in the dark for months about their own home, then all the luxury is stripped from your luxury service and you’re less likely to get that word-of-mouth marketing that keeps small businesses growing.
3 Key Tips for Crafting a Client Experience
Have both a client-facing process and a back of house process. As much as you want to involve the client in the process, you definitely don’t want to bog them down in the jargon and the minutiae of your day-to-day. Instead, create a separate, client-facing process that they can see and one for your own use and the use of your staff. That way your client is getting updates, they’re seeing their project move through the different phases, but they aren’t seeing that you made three follow-up calls, placed a second order for paint, and switched vendors for their pillows. All they see is smooth operations, what’s next, and who is in charge/who to contact for questions.
Use what you’re already doing. While it may feel like they’re winging it with every client right now, in actuality, you probably have more of a plan than you think. From initial call to onboarding to review and feedback requests, you most likely have very specific things you do, you just haven’t written it down officially. And that’s the best place to start. Make a list of every step of your design process and then break it up into four to six phases, name the phases (you can be clever or just number them), you can even translate that process into a project management software like Asana to have a working digital template. If you need help with this, I offer process mapping consultations for this very reason!
Create pretty documents that you can give to clients as resources. Platforms like Canva are a great resource for easily creating beautiful documents and guides for every phase of the client experience. Here is a short list of different document examples you’ll want to consider creating for your client experience:
Project questionnaire
Investment & Budget guide
Design process outline/Welcome guide
Communication guidelines & contact information
Payments information
Project timeline overview
Project revisions process
Install day expectations
Frequently asked questions page
Next steps outline
Presentation templates for each service type
Weekly update template
Offboarding template
But if you don’t want to make these yourself, there are a number of great resources out there for you to utilize. Dakota Design Co. has their own comprehensive template that you can buy and personalize, as well as The Identité Collective.
Your client experience will help you define your brand, and might just be the thing that makes you stick out from the rest of the industry. There are endless ways you can make your client experience unique, and you definitely shouldn’t be afraid to incorporate your personality, aspects of your company’s mission, or even your own values into the process. And while it might seem daunting to implement, there are also endless resources out there to help you. One great place to start is with an OBM who can act as a third party to your business, helping you identify what is working and what is not and giving you the tools and backend support you need to implement a client experience process. Other fantastic resources include podcasts like Well-Designed Business, The Kate Show, and the Wingnut Social.
Ready to get your client experience streamlined?