Client Communication: Balancing Professionalism and Personal Connection
If you’re working with clients in any capacity, whether you’re a done-for-you service provider, freelancer, coach or consultant, you’ll undoubtedly need great communication skills to manage your projects, stay on schedule and hold boundaries with your clients.
In this blog post, I’ll be sharing some tips for effective client communication that balances keeping your client connection with being the trusted expert you are.
Why client communication is essential for your business
While I’m a big fan of creating super streamlined services that sell straight from your website, no matter what sort of service you offer you will we working with another person. And when we work with other people communication is going to be key for things to go smoothly.
Not only is having good client communication important for keeping your clients happy (which it does by the way!), but it also sets the tone for your professional relationship. If you have confident client communications you’ll position yourself as a trusted expert in the eyes of your client and they’ll be much more likely to lean into your processes and cooperate with your collaboration.
By contrast, when we don’t have clear client communications in our businesses, we can quickly run into misunderstandings, scope creep, missed deadlines, and worse. So it also serves you as a business owner to set the tone for your project and use clear client communications throughout your processes to avoid things going off the rails.
Balancing professionalism and personal connection in your client communications
It can be hard to strike the balance between being professional and personable in our client emails and messages. And it’s because both are important!
Our clients have likely booked our service because they trust us as experts AND like us (even a little bit) as humans. So we don’t want our emails and messages to come off like we’re someone else.
In general, I’d encourage you to write how you’d naturally speak to your client. If you prefer a more formal tone, now’s not the time to start swearing 😂 and vice versa.
However, when you do have to hold a boundary - say a deadline was missed - you do want to make sure you are firm, reasonable, clear, and polite in your message. This is where your professionalism will shine!
I recommend assuming your client has the best intentions but is also dealing with many other things aside from your project. So a polite but firm reminder can be a very welcome nudge for them to get you the assets or feedback you’re waiting on.
And if they can’t meet your deadline, or whatever pre-determined scope, it’s your role as the business owner to decide how you want to proceed…
Perhaps you decide you’d like to extend the deadline for your client out of goodwill.
Or offer a rush fee to get them their assets faster.
Or hold to your deadline and offer to reschedule the project if the client can’t make your pre-established timeline.
Whatever you decide, make sure you clearly communicate the situation, your terms and any choices you’re offering the client. And if you have had good communication up to this point, address how to avoid this issue from happening again!
Build systems for more effective client communications in your business
Since you’ll be practicing clear consistent client communication with all your clients, it can be a great idea to create repeatable systems for yourself so you don’t have to reinvent your communications for every project. Having a bank of client emails you send for every project that you can take and tweak can save you a tone of time and make it a lot easier to establish your boundaries upfront and hold firm with any hiccups that may come your way.
Check out the Seamless Client Experience Bundle which includes email templates for everything from your sales conversations, welcome emails, feedback requests, all the way through to project delivery and even feedback & referal requests!
