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The Perfect Client?

We all seek perfect client relationships, those connections in which a business and client work harmoniously with tremendous trust and respect for one another.

Such positive customer relations allow us to enjoy what we do during the day and sleep easier at night.

To help us work towards perfect client relationships, our Roaring Pajamas team arrived at a strategy we try to always keep top of mind. We think our 3 T’s arrive at the simplest way to creating happy, healthy working situations. 

The 3 Simplest Ways to Create Happy, Healthy Customer Relations

1. Teach:

Teaching the whys and hows of your practice – at least at a high level – proves the fastest way to gain the trust of a client.

Don’t get into the weeds and impart tons of theory and details – you are paid to know and do that on your own. But, sharing wisdom on your approach and best practices goes a long way towards building credibility and harmony.

Likewise, clients who happily teach you the ins and outs of their business help both parties. The more you can understand the other’s perspective, the better!

2. Transparentize:

Ensure all of your activities on the client’s behalf remain transparent.

While this remains a best practice for all client dealings, it proves especially important when working with a new client or one who may not be as familiar with your space.

Always share details on how you spend your time and their money, and always communicate a clear plan with metrics and results.

We find the easiest way to implement transparency is through development of a report or scorecard shared on a regular cadence.

Create the report in such a way that benefits you and your practice by not being a huge time sink, but showing appropriate information with enough details that ensures your client feels completely up to speed.

Along the lines of creating transparency, how you communicate with your perfect client serves as a key factor in managing the occasional challenges.

We found a few articles, including one of our own, to help illustrate this point:

• While we don’t have any toxic clients, and hope you don’t, this Harvard Business Review article, How to Deal with a Toxic Client, gives sage advice about communicating with clients.  We find it useful regardless of the state of the relationship. The author advises that one should plan for the worst and be ready to communicate in such a manner that preempts and calms combative or bumpy situations.
• We love this American Express OPEN Forum post on 8 Ways to Deal With a Difficult Client, including the pièce de ré·sis·tance, the FroMLE statement. According to the author, the FroMLE “stands for “from my limited experience,” and the trick is to add this phrase—mentally—to the end of statements others say that offend you.” Clever, no?
• Finally, our article a few months ago, How to Manage Client Satisfaction and Keep Everyone (Mostly) Happy, gives specific details on how we communicate with our clients and manage differences in opinions.

3. Try:

Know that creating the perfect client relationship may take time. Give yourself and your team a set of goals and a timeline to work towards.

Try your hardest to make the partnership work perfectly with your client from the onset. At the end of a certain period, consider the state of your relationship; do you need to adjust anything?

Are your reports to your client clear and achieving the objective? Have you taught your client enough? Do you fully understand their business? Make adjustments if needed.

Once you and your team have tried your very best to achieve an optimal relationship, be willing to consider your options. If you don’t think the perfect client relationship will eventually be cultivated, be prepared to break up. Sometimes we just can’t or won’t see eye-to-eye with a client, and no shame exists understanding when you need to walk away.

How do you manage towards achieving great customer relations and the perfect client relationship? We’d love to hear how you achieve accord between your team and your customers.