As a business supplying services to a client it’s incredibly important to maintain a healthy relationship, making sure that everything is communicated effectively and you are on the same page as each other.
As a business supplying services to a client it’s incredibly important to maintain a healthy relationship, making sure that everything is communicated effectively and you are on the same page as each other. Here’s how we approach building successful client relationships.
Trust is Vital
It’s incredibly important that you build up trust with each other, the service provider needs the customers (the client) to trust them completely. This can be easily achieved through a number of meetings with the prospective client.
Both parties should have an understanding of each other. From a web development point of view, we like to get across of what we can do, what we have done before and then find out what the client expects of us. This builds up a relationship where they can trust us to manage their online presence.
Aims and Goals
It’s important to be mutually aware of each other’s aims and objectives as a business. Again, from a web development perspective, a client may want a website designed in ‘x’ amount of time. Once their expectations have been communicated, it is our job to inform them of whether this is an achievable goal.
This is equally as important for us as feedback is. We create a draft design and get the client to provide feedback as we go, at every stage. This assures them that we are doing what we said we would as well as assuring us that we are doing it right and in line with what the client’s requirements are.
Communication and Collaboration
In our day-to-day operations, we’ve found that communication with clients is absolutely key. Without communication, we are unable to do our job properly and efficiently. This is the same with any other business. If your communication is not up to scratch then you are bound to make a mistake or do something that the client may not want you to do.
If a client has any guidelines as to how they want any visuals to look or tone of voice that they prefer, as part of the communication we should be told that so we can work to their brand guidelines. This links in with collaboration, because as an agency, we do require their input when it comes to big decisions, rather than it being left down to us!
These are some of the ingredients to having a healthy client / business relationship. To reduce the risk of a one-sided partnership, it’s important to implement these into business operations. The main thing that is needed throughout all of the client relationship is clarity, capacity to take action to get meaningful results and the confidence in each other’s abilities.
