Victoria Rayburn [00:00:00]:
The quality of the client experience you offer matters far more than the quality of your products or services. Client communication is arguably the most important aspect of customer service, and in all honesty, it's something that few small businesses take the time to master or to systematize. As a result, if you are willing to prioritize client communication, you can differentiate your business from your competitors, build trust and loyalty with your customers, and ultimately grow your business. Hey there, you're listening to the Priority Pursuit podcast, a podcast dedicated to helping small business owners and leaders define, maintain, and pursue both their personal and business priorities so they can build lives and businesses they love. I'm your host, Victoria Rayburn, and just the other day, my father in law reminded me of a very important key to small business success. You see, as we were catching up, the conversation steered toward business like it often does. You see, on both sides of our families. Zach and I have several small business owning family members.
Victoria Rayburn [00:00:58]:
But anyway, Jeff shared that 2023 was the very best year rebirth plumbing and heating, my father in law's company ever had. When I asked why, Jeff said that there were several factors, but ultimately the biggest reason was client communication. He told me. Customers regularly tell us that they appreciate how we communicate about jobs and how they've used other companies but like to work with us because other contractors are hard to get a hold of. They even disappear in the middle of projects without saying they'll be back, basically, or saying when they'll be back. Basically. People choose us over the other guys because of our communication. And 2023 was a great year because people saw value in that.
Victoria Rayburn [00:01:43]:
Now, Rayburn plumbing and heating has been in business for 40 years, which is a huge feat considering most small businesses fail even before becoming a decade old. And while they certainly do great work, Jeff credits their success primarily to their communication processes. And that's worth noting, at least in my opinion. Now, as a reminder, and as we've mentioned in past episodes of priority pursuit, there are three keys to building a successful small business, offering a great product or service, serving customers well, and having a marketing strategy that actually works. While we usually talk about marketing, today we're going to talk about another aspect of business growth, serving your customers well, more specifically, how your small business can stand out even in a crowded market, when you offer excellent client communication. As we dive into this topic, I need to tell you something that you likely don't want to hear, and that is that the quality of the client experience you offer matters far more than the quality of your products or services. I'm going to say it again. The quality of the client experience you offer matters far more than the quality of your products or services.
Victoria Rayburn [00:02:54]:
I know it hurts, but it's true. I learned this lesson when I was a weding photographer. I mean, I took a lot of pride in my work and I wanted my images to speak for themselves and for people to book me because they loved my photos. However, here's the thing, the average person does not know what makes a great photo. Prospects were never going to look at my images and think whoa, I bet that harsh light was hard to shoot in. Victoria did an amazing job. Or I so appreciate how Victoria used lead lines and framed the couple in these images. She has to be our weding photographer and like my clients were never truly going to understand the quality of my photos.
Victoria Rayburn [00:03:31]:
Your clients likely won't ever truly understand the quality of your work or the intricacies that go into it, regardless of what your small business does or sells. In fact, if you did a side by side of your and your competitors work, there's a good chance that your clients wouldn't even be able to tell the difference, even if what you offer is superior simply because your customers aren't experts in your field. Now, I'm not saying that you should offer anything less than a great product or service. Again, that is one of the keys to ultimately building a successful, scalable small business. However, customer service matters. In fact, according to HubSpot, 93% of customers are likely to make repeat purchases from businesses that offer a great client experience, and 83% of customers are likely to refer a business to friends and family after having a positive experience. There are several aspects to offering a great client experience, but client communication is arguably the most important aspect of customer service. And in all honesty, it's something that few small businesses take the time to master or to systematize.
Victoria Rayburn [00:04:36]:
As a result, if you are willing to prioritize communication, you can differentiate your business from your competitors, build trust and loyalty with your customers, and ultimately grow your business. Now, because every small business's clients have different needs, every small business's communication strategy is going to look different. For example, at Treefrog, our flywheel marketing clients sign one year contracts, meaning it takes a full year for us to provide a service. However, if an online boutique makes a sale, the buyer's transaction likely only lasts a few days from purchase to delivery of the item because the transaction process and the buyer's needs are very different. In these situations, the communication processes need to be different. That said, as you design your own client communication strategy, there are seven guiding principles or rules of thumb to keep in mind. And that's exactly what we're going to discuss in this episode of priority pursuit. Now, the first and possibly most important principle of client communication is to respond quickly.
Victoria Rayburn [00:05:34]:
In fact, studies show that 96% of customers are more likely to trust a company with quick response times. In general, the faster you respond the better, but you want to respond to client emails within no more than 24 hours of receiving them. Ideally, you'll respond well before the 24 hours mark because the faster you respond, the more satisfied your customers will be. And considering the average email response time is 12 hours, responding to emails even within a few hours is an easy way to stand out from your competitors. Even if you're simply sending an email to let a client know that you've received their message and that you'll get back to them at a specified time. I mean, sometimes you need to gather information before you can fully respond, but you can at least acknowledge their message and they will appreciate that. Now, while people expect to wait hours for an email response, studies show that most people expect an almost immediate response from chat boxes, text messages, phone calls and direct messages. As a result, you want to prioritize responding to these forms of communication.
Victoria Rayburn [00:06:36]:
Now, you obviously cannot live your life in your inbox and your dms all day, but there are a few ways you can take responding to messages off your plate, or at least streamline the process through templates and automation. Now, when it comes to responding to emails and messages, templates are a must. Chances are you receive similar messages from inquiries and clients on a regular basis. As a result, if you take the time to develop templates, you can respond to those messages in just moments. Now, while you can copy and paste your templates into messages, you can save even more time with tools you're likely already using. For example, honeybook, a CRM that we love, allows you to create templates and use them with a click or two when responding to an email. Gmail even now allows you to save email response templates. When it comes to responding from your phone, you can create keyboard shortcuts.
Victoria Rayburn [00:07:30]:
If you have no idea what I'm talking about, just give it a quick Google. But essentially you can create a template on your phone and assign the template a text shortcut. Then every time you type the shortcut, your template will automatically be inserted. This is great for responding to dms. Also, just kind of as a side note, if you're not using keyboard shortcuts, oh man, you are missing out. So just as an example, I mean I love them. But just as an example, I have a shortcut for my email, so if I just type ve, my email address is automatically inserted so I don't have to type out vrayburnettreefrogmarketing.com it's just easier. But anyway, while templates are going to save you a lot of time, automations can save you even more time.
Victoria Rayburn [00:08:12]:
There are so many ways you can automate client communication, but just to give you a few ideas, you can utilize minichat to respond to dms. You can use honeybook or another CRM to respond to inquiries. For example, when prospects contact us through our website, our honeybook automation sends them an email and allows them to schedule a discovery call. Our prospects are immediately served, which is great customer service and in the meantime our team can focus on other work rather than hanging out in the inbox and seeing who inquired through the website. Now, technology is certainly helpful, but as a small business owner or leader, I want to encourage you to delegate this task to your team. Yes, there are some emails you truly do need to be the one to respond to. I get it, it's hard to hand off your inbox entirely. However, your time is too valuable to be spent in your inbox on a regular basis.
Victoria Rayburn [00:09:06]:
So whether you hire a va, you hire a full time team member. Task a current member of your team of handling communications. This is a task that you can hand off, especially if templates aren't in place, because you can already more or less guarantee that people are going to say exactly what you want them to say. Now, not only do quick responses improve customer satisfaction, but having a fast response time can literally lead to more sales. In fact, 78% of the time people purchase from the business that responds first, meaning if you can respond faster than your competitors, you're almost guaranteed to make the sale. Now, as we discuss having quick response times, this is the Priority Pursuit podcast, where we want to encourage you to build a business that allows you to live the life you love. With this in mind, if you're out of the office or on vacation, or just away for the evening or the weekend, do not think that this means that you need to be available all times. Automations can ensure your clients are responded to in a timely manner.
Victoria Rayburn [00:10:04]:
You can certainly use an out of the office response, letting your clients and inquiries know when they will hear from you and when you're away. And if you set clear communication expectations by ensuring your clients know when your office hours are, you should feel free to sign off outside of those hours. Now, speaking of setting expectations another important aspect of client communication is setting clear expectations. If you've ever read a book about marriage or participated in any kind of marriage counseling, you have probably heard the saying, most confrontations are a result of unmet expectations. Well, that is true in both marriage and business, y'all. You see, if you want to have happy customers who feel well served, you have to communicate and set expectations. You need to clearly lay out timelines, exactly what they'll receive from you, what you need from them, and anything else that is pertinent to your time together. I mean, think about it.
Victoria Rayburn [00:10:59]:
If you have a leak, you're going to be pretty frustrated if a plumbing company doesn't tell you when you can expect them, or if they start work before giving you a quote, or if they shut your water off without consulting you first, right? Like that's really frustrating. Failing to set expectations inevitably leads to unhappy customers, because when they don't know what to expect from you, they will create unspoken expectations in their heads. And when you don't meet those, they won't feel well served because the product or service isn't what they thought they were going to get. However, when you set clear expectations, your customers know exactly what they'll receive from you. This allows you to meet and then even exceed their expectations. This will cause them to remember you, rave about you, and send more business your way.
Natalie Franke [00:11:46]:
What would you do with an extra 45 minutes every workday that would save you 16 hours a month or roughly eight days a year? And over the course of your career, we're talking about over one year of your life. Saved all that time back? Well, many independent business owners spend far more than 45 minutes a day on administrative tasks. And with honeybook, you can get that time back, and then some. Honeybook lets you easily manage projects, contracts, invoices, scheduling, and client communication, saving you time and allowing you to better serve your clients. For a discount on your first year of Honeybook, visit honeybook.com and subscribe with the code priority pursuit, 45 minutes a day adds up quickly. Use it to focus on what matters most.
Kelly Rice [00:12:31]:
Many small businesses don't have an effective marketing strategy, and because of this, they try one tactic after another without seeing results. This not only prevents consistent business growth, it makes managing marketing efforts more difficult than it should be. As a marketing agency for small businesses, we understand how frustrating it can be when hard work doesn't deliver the results that you want. Because of this, Treefrog has developed a proven four step marketing system that will help any small business grow. On our website, you can also, schedule a 30 minutes discovery call to discuss working with Treefrog to build a marketing strategy that will allow your small business to finally see the growth you've been working so hard to achieve.
Victoria Rayburn [00:13:09]:
Another key to offering excellent client communication is always being at least one step ahead of your customers. Basically, your clients will feel very well served and appreciate how on top of things you are when your communication answers their questions before they even ask them. So what questions do your clients regularly ask or what do you know that they want to know? For example, if you own an auto detailing business, your customers likely want to know the cost of a detailing service based on the make, model and size of their car. So when they book their appointment, be sure to give them that information up front. If you own a veterinary clinic, a common question your customer might have is when is my dog due for vaccines? To serve your clients well, you could send them a text or email reminder about when it's time for their pet's next appointment. When I was a wedding photographer, clients always wanted to know what they should wear for their engagement photos. As a result, after they signed their contract and submitted their retainer, the next email they received from me was available engagement session dates and a style guide that walked them through how to choose their engagement photo outfits. Now, we do this in many ways at Treefrog, but to give you one example, after a flywheel marketing client signs their contract and submits their first month's payment, they know that the next step will be a strategy meeting.
Victoria Rayburn [00:14:25]:
Naturally, they want to know what we need from them. So before they've had a chance to ask the question, we send them a list of everything we need so they feel prepared and so that we can get the most out of the meeting. It just makes it better for their team, makes it better for our team and everybody's happy. Chances are, each and every one of your customers share common questions. And when you know what those questions are, you can better serve your customers by answering their questions before they even have a chance to ask them. If you want to offer excellent client communication, something else that you need to do is to have a means of keeping record of all client conversations. You and your team likely have multiple customers to serve, and your clients have busy lives of their own. As a result, it's certainly possible that one of you will forget a key detail somewhere along the line so you don't let anything fall through the cracks and so that your clients don't falsely believe that they have given you information they have not.
Victoria Rayburn [00:15:23]:
You need some kind of system to record all of your communication. For example, at Treefrog we use Basecamp to communicate with each and every small business that we work with. This allows us to organize topics of discussion, keep all files, links and other pertinent information in one place, and for every member of our team to see client communication so that nothing is missed, we can all access the same messages. On that note, it's wise to tell your clients where or how you would like them to communicate with you. I know it feels like you're offering great customer service when you allow customers to communicate with you however they like, but with so many communication options, it's just too easy to lose information if you have clients texting, dming and emailing you. So you need to tell your clients where they should contact you. I promise you, making sure nothing falls through the cracks is so much like that's better customer service than giving them the freedom to contact you however they want. Now, for example, when we onboard a new client at Treefrog, we add them to basecamp and tell them that this is where we will communicate with them and where they need to communicate with us.
Victoria Rayburn [00:16:26]:
This way, all messages, files, links and any other pertinent information can be found in one place and both their team and our team can access the information we need. Rather than hoping nothing was lost in a team member's inbox, a DM somewhere, or was just said in passing. And then when we do talk to our clients, we make sure to send messages via basecamp with recaps of meetings or even recordings of meetings to ensure that we and our clients are on the same page. We love Basecamp and if you are looking for a really great client communication system or project management system, check. We'll include a link in the show notes. It's great, we've been using it for years, but another communication principle that your clients will appreciate you following is providing updates. Yes, set expectations upfront, but giving your customers updates along the way will instill even more trust. Now this principle is going to look very different from business to business because transaction time is going to be different.
Victoria Rayburn [00:17:22]:
But to give you a few examples, if you sell and ship your products, your POS system likely has a feature that will allow you to email or text your customers shipping updates, such as when an order is shipped, when it's out for delivery, and then when it's delivered. If you are a dog groomer, you might send your clients a text to let them know when their pup's appointment has officially begun, and another message when they're ready to be picked up. If you really wanted to go above and beyond, you could even send photos throughout the process, or at least of the finished product. I mean, dog people love photos of their dogs. I'm saying this as a dog person and somebody who really loves my dog and takes her to be groomed a few times a year. But anyway, if you offer a more long term service like we do at Treefrog, you'll want to provide updates about the status of a project. For example, when we design a website for a client, we reach out to let them know as their website moves from phase to phase. For example, we'll contact them when their site goes from the content development phase to the design phase.
Victoria Rayburn [00:18:21]:
This way our clients know where their site stands, that their project is important to us, and that they haven't been forgotten about. Again, how you provide updates to your customers very much depends on what you sell and what the transaction fulfillment process looks like. But by providing your clients with updates, you can instill trust and make sure that your clients feel well served. Now, to improve client communication, something else you want to do is to make sure that you always have the last word. Now, I don't mean this like in a weird, threatening godfather kind of way. I simply mean that you never want to give your clients an opportunity to feel like or say that you didn't respond to them. So before an email thread or any other kind of message ends, make sure the last message comes from you, even if it is just a simple thank you or have a nice day. Last but not least, under promise and over deliver.
Victoria Rayburn [00:19:14]:
Now this is a principle that applies to every aspect of customer service, and you can learn more about this practice if you go way back and listen to episode 14. Four easy ways you can under promise and over deliver to your customers, which we'll be sure to link in the show notes. But under promising and over delivering is simply a customer service strategy where you give your clients more than you initially promised to delight them and make them feel valued. Now, offering great communication in itself is an easy way to under promise and over deliver. But as you think about your communication strategy, ask yourself how you can deliver more. For example, in your email templates, perhaps you include links to relevant resources you've created, such as your opt in or a relevant blog post, so that you can provide a customer with information that they're going to find valuable. Or maybe, like I mentioned in the example of the dog groomer sending a photo to the client, you come up with a small way like that to surprise and delight them. Sending them a preview of some kind.
Victoria Rayburn [00:20:11]:
Or maybe you send them a message or even a discount for your products or services, or something entirely else, like a gift card for coffee on their birthday. The options are limitless, and when you take the time to think about it, I can almost promise you that you can find ways to under promise and over deliver through client communication. Now, if you want to consistently offer excellent client communication, you have to create systems and ideally, choose tools to make this aspect of customer service simple and easy for you and your team. If you don't, I can almost promise you this is one more thing in your business that will eventually be put by the wayside. If you'd like guidance on how to create systems, please go back and listen to episode 118 four systems every small business must have to increase efficiency and growth in this episode, Mary, who is our director of operations, breaks down everything you need to know about creating systems as a small business. But in short, to design a solid communication system, look at your customers transaction process from start to finish. Determine what information they need, what expectations you need to set, what questions they have, how you can answer their questions before they ask them, what kind of updates they need from you, and how you can surprise and delight them through your communication. Then from there, determine how you can communicate with your clients quickly and effectively so you can prioritize response times and serve them all.
Victoria Rayburn [00:21:32]:
This might include designating a member or members of your team to handle aspects of communication, creating templates, or using automations really quick. I do want to note that there are all kinds of automation tools out there. Chances are many of the systems you're currently using have automation features. For example, most crms like honeybook and your POS system. They probably have email options, text options. Look into those things. Now, setting up a stellar client communication system and process is going to take time. But at the end of the day, prioritizing communication is a simple and even a cost effective way to stand out from your competitors.
Victoria Rayburn [00:22:11]:
Sure, you can continue to compete based on the quality of your products, services and prices. But y'all, what if your competitors work is just as good? What if your clients can't tell the difference between your work and theirs, even if yours is superior? And what if you and your competitors are charging similar prices? Or worse, what if your competitors are charging less than you? In any of these circumstances, you can either hope for the best or you can make yourself the obvious choice by prioritizing customer communication. Because again, like we discussed at the beginning of this episode, 93% of customers are likely to make repeat purchases from your business that offer a great client experience, and 83% of customers are likely to refer your business after having a positive experience with you. Long story short, if you are willing to prioritize and systemize sorry, honest podcast team long story short, if you're willing to prioritize and systematize client communication, your small business is practically guaranteed to grow. And on that note, thank you for tuning into another episode of the Priority Pursuit podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, we hope you'll take a moment to share it with your small business friends to leave us a review on Apple Podcasts, and that you'll join us next week for even more marketing boundary and priority driven tactics you can use to build a life in small business that you love.
