How to Overcome Common Client Services Problems
Working with clients can sometimes be stressful for all parties.
As clients pay for a professional service, they expect to see a return on their investment and to enjoy the agency experience, anything less can harm the client and agency relationship.
When you’re working within an agency, especially in a client services role which involves working so closely with the client, there is an intense need to maintain a good rapport. Yet it is important to ensure that you are also fulfilling the agency’s needs and not falling into the trap of over servicing clients for example.
This sometimes pulls you between looking after your agency’s needs, and providing the very best for your clients.
Read on to discover more about three common client service problems and how you can make steps to resolve them:
Errors made on client projects
The role of client services is crucial when it comes to relaying the needs of your client to the project team and ensuring that these needs are met.
When mistakes occur, you’re accountable for communicating any mishaps to the client. To ensure this doesn’t happen, be transparent with the wider team. By correctly relaying all information, accountability will be shared among the team, which helps ensure that work is delivered correctly and in a timely manner.
Some clients could be trickier to deal with than others and may require plenty of your time and attention. They may constantly call you with new demands and requirements.
If this is the case, make sure that you note any changes mentioned, get them briefed into the relevant team members. Consider investing in project management software, or project planning software, so any amends made can be easily viewed by the project management team and studio.
Data being unavailable for client meetings
If you’re an agency with plenty of clients, you can be required to meet them face-to-face on a regular basis.
Frequently conducting business outside of the office can leave you prone to the odd slip-up, such as forgetting important documents for business meetings.
To guarantee that you don’t suffer, the best way to prevent it is by making sure all your data is available remotely.
Having it available on your smartphone, tablet or even a USB stick, can stop you wasting not only your time, but your clients as well.
Overspending on client projects
If your client’s project is quite extensive, there’s a possibility you can take your eye off the ball when it comes to spending.
Costs can creep up on you when you least expect it, and can leave you with a large overspend if you aren’t careful.
A simple way to put this issue to bed is by using job costing software to track your projects.
This software allows you to accurately track your client’s projects. Yourself and the project manager have a complete, live view of where the project is against budget and whether or not it’s on track. If it slips off track, you’ll find out quickly and can rectify this before it becomes a big issue and crucially, manage client expectations.
Your profit becomes more evident as this software provides you with information on how much time you’ve spent on your client’s project.
When dealing with clients, always make sure to be attentive when noting down their ideas and taking instructions. Communication with your co-workers is crucial with projects of any size, and without it there are surely going to be problems throughout their duration.