Make it Make Sense: How to Level Up Your Client Service Game

Do you make it easy for clients to do business with you? Are your systems designed to communicate with ease? It all comes down to good customer service. There are times when that can be the thing that leads a prospect or client to choose you or the competition.

 

Transcript

Michelle Kane (00:17):

Thank you for joining us for this episode of That Solo Life, the podcast for PR pros and marketers who work for themselves like me, Michelle Kane, with VoiceMatters, and my wonderful co-host, Karen Swim of Solo PR Pro. Hi Karen, how are you today?

Karen Swim (00:33):

I'm doing fantastic, Michelle. How are you?

Michelle Kane (00:35):

I'm well, I am well, oddly perky. Must be the coffee kicking in .

Karen Swim (00:42):

I'm oddly perky too. And I think that that is, because sometimes chaos forces you to roll with the punches. Oh, true. And you just are like going to roll with it. It's fine. I'm fine.

Michelle Kane (00:52):

Keep swimming. We'll get through .

Karen Swim (00:56):

Absolutely.

Michelle Kane (00:57):

Well, I am, I'm excited about the topic today. We're going to talk about, how do I phrase it? The way we work, right? How do we communicate with each other? How do we communicate with vendors? And I'm, and we're talking about from the viewpoint of we are solos, but we are of course also small businesses and how that impacts, you know, how you accomplish your goals at work, how you get things done. You know, are you a project management person? Are you, you know, always on Slack, that kind of thing. Just our, just going to talk about some best practices. Oh, and maybe some pet peeves too. Who knows

Karen Swim (01:34):

. Yeah. Because small business is obviously quite important in the larger, you know Yeah. Ecosystem of getting things done and work and hiring people. But you have small businesses that truly look like small businesses because they lack a certain level. I don't even want to say sophistication, because that's the wrong word. Right. But they're missing components that you'll get from a bigger business. And as solos, we want to always make sure that we are, although small, that we're mighty. And that we are delivering service levels that are equivalent to our larger counterparts. And that we're not missing key, key things that we can be doing that can make us stand apart. Because you can be small and look totally small, and when you look totally small in the wrong ways, because you know, there's a difference between having a boutique or a micro agency where you get a higher level of personalized touch.

Things are not, you know, as templated where, you know, they're getting a level of quality and they're getting senior level help that they might not get. And then being small and looking small as in like you're an amateur. Right. And that, you know, and so I know that within our community, it's one of the reasons why our solo PR community in particular pushes back hard against the term freelance pr. Right. And I believe that it's because for so many freelance at one point in history did connotate someone who wasn't truly running a business, but was just kind of taking a gig here or there. And it felt like one level above hobbyist. I will say, and I, dear solos, I love you, but freelance no longer has that negative association. But I completely understand, you know, the distinction as well. And I never re refer to myself as a freelance PR person, but I'm also not offended if, if that's how somebody wants to categorize me, as long as they, you know, are treating me like an agency and paying me like, you know, they're supposed to and not pay me. Like, you know, I'm,

Michelle Kane (03:52):

Yeah. Just don't have this money

Karen Swim (03:53):

Experience and job. Yeah. Like, oh, I just need to buy a Starbucks today. Isn't that cute? And I don't really care. . Yeah.

Michelle Kane (04:00):

Yes. . Yeah. And,  I think a lot of it has to do with communication between yourself Yes. And vendors between yourself and your clients. Just, you know, how that happens, what the expectations are. And you know, a lot of us who have worked either in-house or, you know, been employed by someone first, it's like, yeah, I call it office bootcamp, right. Because I came up, I spent my summers working in the accounts payable department at one company. So, it's like osmosis. You take it all in. Not that you say, well, this is how I'm going to work forever. But, you know, and then eventually working for an agency, you just take in like, oh, when someone asks you to do something, you let them know, okay, this is a timetable. It's like, yes. Common courtesy. Yes. Or, you know, you get to observe different systems and just then really mold that into your, the way that you work. Especially as most of our clients are probably not fellow business owners like us, for the most part. They're, these are people who own or work in companies. So it really helps to have that and if you haven't, that's fine, but just be open to following their lead, really.

Karen Swim (05:22):

Yes, I agree. And you hit on something that I've noticed, and you and I have chatted about this of course, as solos, we also not only are small business owners, but we love supporting small business owners.  And that's a good feeling when you have more of a direct connection to the person that's producing the product or service. I find that very gratifying. And it makes me feel good that I'm contributing to the economy in a meaningful way, that you actually are supporting someone else's livelihood. And I love to do that. However, I've also, like all of you, had my share of frustrations with small businesses that are not matching even the basic service levels and communication is way high on the list for me. And so, as solos, we have to make sure that we are not making people feel like they're losing by having a smaller agency.

Just because you don't have five offices across the globe and, you know, 10,000 people does not mean that clients should be left in the dark about, you know, what you're doing, how you're doing it. If they ask you a question, you know, it shouldn't linger you. You need to, you need to establish on a regular basis, you know how you're communicating. And if a client asks you to report something in a way, or to respond to something in a way or on a channel that really is very different from your workflow, it doesn't mean that you have to do everything that they say the way that they say do it. But you need to have a conversation about that.

Michelle Kane (07:04):

Yeah. And it's, it's all part of the, the expectation management. Yeah. Especially at the outset and, you know, setting those parameters. And, you know, even in the day-to-day communications, I mean, to me, Slack is a wonderful thing because to me, you know, being a…

Karen Swim (07:22):

An email.

Michelle Kane (07:23):

Yes. And being a certain age, I like to have something documented. So, if a client prefers to do business completely via text, that's crazy making for me. Because I have to look down at something. Yes, I have a desktop text, you know, thing. But still I can't, not that I print out emails anymore, but when I did, it's like, I can't print this text out. This is crazy. Well now I don't, I can't go back to that anyway.

Karen Swim (07:51):

It's not in a threaded nice threaded conversation that you can find, please. And there are things that definitely be do not belong in email that don't, you know, do not need that level of documentation. Quick questions, you know, quick, Hey, correct.

Michelle Kane (08:03):

Right.

Karen Swim (08:04):

This published, I don't really need that in my email. Right. But you know, I think it also comes down to being a small business and doing your part to make it easy to engage with you.

Michelle Kane (08:17):

Oh, a hundred percent.

Karen Swim (08:19):

Here's some tensions. Payments is one. This is, this could be a source of tension,

Michelle Kane (08:26):

Maybe…

Karen Swim (08:27):

You need to make it easy for people to pay you. And I understand that sometimes clients have owner systems that are completely out of their control. If you have enterprise clients and you know that oftentimes there's, I'm going to say almost always there could be an onboarding process because they use somebody that manages their independent contractors. Just be aware that's their program. It's not going to change for you. Don't fight it. Don't make it hard for them to engage you because you don't understand their system. Sometimes there's going to be, you know, not only a contract, but there's going to be a master service agreement and then purchase orders. And sometimes those purchase orders have to be done monthly. Sometimes they can be for the extent of the agreement, it just depends on how their budgeting works. And so you need to be prepared that sometimes on the client end there are just things that you cannot rail against because they don't have any other alternative to offer you.

But you shouldn't take it as a personal affront that they're asking you to do these administrative things. And it's burdensome for a small business because again, yes, we are small businesses, but on some things we have to be able to play in the same way that larger companies do. There are other policies that definitely, like there are things in contracts that definitely you should challenge sometimes. And, and that again, yeah, these are conversations that we have. I've been onboarded by clients where I had to go through a whole onboarding system. I had to have a background check. Everybody on my team had to have a background check. We had to go through their security clearance system, we can only access through their system. So it did mean downloading another tool, logging into something else doing this. We had to have a company email.

We were fine to email from our emails, but we still had to have this company email to access other things. So you roll with it and you make it easy for your client to do business. You don't put up these barricades like, I'm small, you're asking me to do too much. Or no, you can't pay me digitally. And if you do, it's an extra charge or you're, you know, you have to think about these things as you're setting rates for your clients and ensure that you are including the full cost of doing business outside of those costs that are expenses. So we're not talking about expenses, but you do need to make sure that your contracts specify expenses such as press release distribution are a separate line item. They'll be pre-approved before they're billed back to you.

But yeah, those are not part of the retainer, so, some people, I mean, I just had this with a vendor that I'm working with. I do not write checks. I do not have cash. And half the time I'm not around when the service is performed, please give me a way to pay you digitally. And then I have a record of it, by the way, I do want a record because otherwise am I just giving you cash? And then I've got to keep a record of I paid you on this date in like a paper notebook. Like that's, that's not making it easy for me to do business. And by the way, there are competitors that will have better communication, give me the same exact service for the same exact price. And I can pay them digitally with no problems, no questions asked, and, you know, get a better level of personal service. So as solos, we have to be careful that we're not creating these unnecessary hurdles for our prospective clients.

Michelle Kane (12:09):

Right. I mean, I consider part of customer service is to make it easy for you to pay me - what a beautiful thing. But in other things too, and everything communicates - everything we do. Not to make us too paranoid, or looking over our shoulder, but you know, the tone in your emails, the way and how often you might communicate or not communicate. Everything we do communicates something. And that doesn't mean that the receiver of that communication realizes that at the time, but it builds. So, you know, as a business owner, my goal is always to provide the best experience possible knowing that we're all human. And my guess is if we have our own solo shop, we're probably pretty hard on ourselves. And I mean, I've had times where I've gone to clients and said, oh my goodness I cannot believe that. So sorry, you know, flogging myself. And thankfully I'd like to think probably because of building up that subconscious goodwill through good communication, they've been like, oh, what that? Oh no, it's fine. And I think, oh, ,

Karen Swim (13:14):

Yes.

Michelle Kane (13:15):

And then I wonder, yes. Oh, okay, good. So, it's just something to keep in mind as we operate, and I think it also does us all a good service as we do build our businesses. If we do carry out just our communications in a way that, that makes the profession look good, right? Because we, especially in PR, we are always fighting that battle on some level, you know, fighting against the flack connotation or the superficial, you just throw parties, we're always was fighting against that. So any way that you can elevate the way that you do business with other people, and that can be clients and vendors alike is a positive.

Karen Swim (13:59):

Absolutely. And I will tell you, a friend of mine, one of my best friends shared one of his businesses is real estate and he was sharing, I know his mortgage broker or the person that he was using as his mortgage broker. And now that person was great and was able to get deals done and understood like how to work with investors and creative financing and how to work with self-employed people and how to work with people that have multiple LLCs. Just amazing. So it's not that he was very smart, you know, very responsive, his team was great. The service was great. There was nothing wrong with it. But then he had to work with this other guy and this guy made it easier for him to do business. So rather than having to go to this other guy and have to check in before every offer was made, and then have him do a whole new approval letter. The new mortgage guy has a portal, and the minute you're approved, you and your client have access to the portal. You can go in and you can run the calculator based on the house what you are planning to offer. It includes taxes and all the fees so that you can see your mortgage payment and everything prior to even generating. And then you can generate offer letters for as long as you need to until you are under contract. All streamlined and automated. And so my friend loves that. He and the client are empowered to keep moving at his fast pace and not having to take that extra step. And so I say that because sometimes as a solo PR pro, you may be competing against someone who has the same level of skillset that you do. It's not that you are not smart enough to do the work.

It's not that you're not likable, it's not that they have something that's off-putting that makes them not want to do business with you. It may just be that that other candidate is making it easier for them to do business with them in some way. And so I think that, for me, when my friend said that it did make me stop and yeah, really kind of think through my whole process and my systems and make sure that I'm not making it harder to engage me or to work with me on a day-to-day basis. What ways can I streamline things for my clients? How can I automate things so that they don't have to ask for it? How can I empower them with information and be proactive about it instead of being reactionaries? Are there any, you know, are there points that I'm missing? And I think that for all of us, it's worth having that checkpoint because we don't want to lose out because we're smart enough to do the work, but we're just not efficient enough to close the deal.

Michelle Kane (16:57):

Right, right. And that is so true. And sometimes that is the only differentiator. So, we encourage you, just do a little gut check, take a look at the way you're doing work because honestly, look, we're so involved in doing our work and sometimes we don't pull back and say, huh, is that the best way to do that? Is there a way that I can streamline processes, not just for my clients, but hey, it helps yourself too. So it's

Karen Swim (17:23):

No kidding,

Michelle Kane (17:24):

It's a win-win. So we hope we've been an encourager to you today and until next time, thanks for listening to That Solo Life.