How to Walk the Client Service Tightrope

I’ve worked in service-driven capacities almost my whole life. I started in retail environments scooping ice cream and assisting women in clothing stores and moved on to include clients both global and local. I’ve drawn on early childhood experiences, too, having watched my parents aid grieving and often angry families through the stressful process of saying goodbye to loved ones.  A tenuous balance of practicality, necessity, and emotional.

At a glance, these are disparate life experiences with little in common.  But the reality is there are a number of threads common to assisting others in a pay-for-service/product model.  Whether it involves building the perfect ice cream sundae or leading a brand audit where the end result is a fab tag line, there are some best practices to keep in mind when serving clients.

In a future post, I plan to explore service, engagement, and word of mouth. For now, let’s focus on some practical tips for client service.

These are a few things that have occurred to me lately. What would you add?

• Repeat after me. This is what I heard you say.  I write Conference Reports, delineating between conversation participants and those outside the circle who also need to be kept in the general loop. Conference Reports take time, energy, and very often go unread by the client…but they’ve saved my proverbial buns more than once.

• Clear task ownership.  Some people think it’s silly or granular to write and assign ownership for the multitude of inputs that go into planning, managing, and executing a project. And like Conference Reports, it certainly takes time.  It feels like I’m everyone’s Mother Hen and sometimes I even feel a little resentful when I get the inevitable eye-roll when sending out reminder emails, leaving post-it notes, or writing on someone’s white board. Completing a project and delivering strong results is not happenstance.  All stakeholders – even clients – must contribute in meaningful, timely ways.

• Strong communication platform. On projects with multiple stakeholders, using email to communicate just doesn’t work.  It’s too linear, leaves a large margin for error (selective sharing of info), and isn’t a central, historical repository.  I’ve found 37Signal’s Basecamp product to be instrumental in helping Ovation Interactive successfully manage a large number of client projects. It has a central log in, selective user rights, communication threading, and a lot of other solid features.

• Manage expectations. Cost-of-entry for most relationships, I think managing internal and external expectations is one of the hardest and most critical business necessity.  Often people overstate capacity or capabilities because they want to please or simply been seen as a rock star. But it’s important to temper enthusiasm with real-word variables. Is it really feasible to complete those three videos before Wednesday when the other new uber-hot project just landed on your desk? Probably not. So talk with your client liaison so that he/she can begin prepping the client that there might be a shift in scheduling. Most times, reasonable forenotice of slight adjustments are digestible.

• Respectful pushback. I was once with an agency that lost a client after years of doing business with them.  Later, someone on the client side said to me, “You know, it would have been good if you’d told us ‘No’ every once in awhile. We need pushback. In the end, there was no respect.”  I think that brief conversation said volumes about creating and sustaining mutually beneficial relationships. Whether the pushback is about wrong-timed input, a reestimation of costs based on client changes, or holding fast to an opinion that the client’s idea is a poor one, pushback can and should happen.

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