Working with clients is often the trickiest part of being a web designer. Coding you can do, but people? People can be the worst. But you have to work well with them because they’re helping to pay your rent. When you’re not trying to fend off the people who want to pay you in exposure, anyway. You have to form a mutually beneficial relationship with your clients, where you both appreciate each other’s hard work instead of spending all your time wishing you could read each other’s minds. If you want to get more from your clients and avoid tearing your hair out, try these tips.
Don’t Assume They Know Anything
Relationships between clients and designers can get really frustrating, and it’s often for one reason. The client doesn’t understand what you’re talking about. While it can be annoying to explain basic concepts to your clients, it’s all part of the job. You can’t assume that they know anything – even the super simple stuff. As you work with them, you’ll get to know what level of understanding they have. Even if you have to explain that you can’t print out a GIF and have it still move on paper, at least you’ll know where they’re at. It is your job nay, reason for living to guide them down the right path.
Stay in Touch Without Badgering
Communication is vital if you want to improve your client relations. The problem is, you have to get that fine balance between not communicating enough and being too pushy. How many times is too many to email your client and remind them to sign off on some new work? While you don’t want to bother them every two minutes, it’s not helpful to send them an email and then wonder two weeks later why they haven’t replied yet. Try setting up a timeline for keeping in touch with clients and reminding them to get back to you.
Deliver Top Customer Service
If only just communication with your clients was enough – unfortunately, you have to be nice to them too. When you provide your services, you also have to deliver customer service along with them. Customer service involves a range of tasks, from promptly responding to queries to helping to fix problems and complaints. Your clients are looking for you to treat them well, and in return, they will give you more. Deliver excellent customer service, and your clients will be more willing to cooperate with you.
Snag More Work from Them
Everyone wants more work. If you’re hoping to get as much value as possible from your clients, you should aim to get more work from them. Of course, they probably don’t want you to go for the hard sell, so you have to be careful. Firstly you can try gently upselling other products and services to see if they bite. Another way to get more work from clients is to encourage referrals. And the best way to encourage referrals? Free stuff, obviously. Everyone likes free stuff, so try offering a bonus reward to referrers – like credit, a discount or maybe actually agreeing to do some work for exposure for once.
If you want to get the best from your clients, you need to be a people person. Give them what they want, so they give you what you want. If you liked this post – feel free to share, comment and also join our Facebook Group and even sign up to our newsletter to get tips, tricks and advice from all of us here at The Marketplace.
We totally recommend this course for all website developers and designers. Great tips, tricks and business advice from the Experts who help clients get exactly what they need.
