Learn how to improve your client relationship management through better communication and collaboration tools. The more you and your clients are on the same page, the more successful projects you’ll have for long-term success.
The heart of your business isn’t just your services. It’s the clients you serve. Strong client relationships strengthen loyalty and increase the likelihood that customers will recommend your business to others.
Research shows that 89% of companies consider customer experience their primary area of competition. By focusing on client relationship management, you can dramatically boost business success.
In this guide, we’ll share actionable tips to improve client relationships and highlight tools that make client relationship management easier.
Jump to:
- The importance of client relationship management
- Tips for communicating effectively with clients
- Dealing with difficult clients and miscommunications
- Best practices for emailing clients effectively
- Automating client communications to save time
- Using a client portal to stay organized and manage projects with clients
- Improve client relationship management with HoneyBook
The importance of client relationship management
Client relationship management (often known as CRM) is defined as the practice of building and maintaining strong, ongoing relationships with clients through consistent communication, organization, and personalized service. For small business owners, this dedicated focus improves client satisfaction, boosts referrals, and increases long-term revenue.
That said, small business owners may feel like client relationship management doesn’t apply to them and that they ca always find new clients. But the reality is:
Businesses that prioritize customer experience, on average, are 5.7x more profitable than businesses that don’t
Research shows that acquiring a new customer is 5-7x as expensive as retaining an existing customer
Tips for communicating effectively with clients
One of the top ways you can improve the customer experience is to focus on client communication. Effective client communication can prevent future disagreements and disappointments, giving you a better chance of fostering long-term trust. Here are three tips to get you started
1. Focus on transparency
Sometimes clients expect services your business doesn’t offer—or misunderstand the scope. You can forestall these issues with clear, open communication.
Communication is more than what you say to customers. It also includes:
- Contracts that outline your services, pricing, and upcharges (e.g., extra revisions)
- Written clarity in all documents, down to your language, font, and layout
- Visual cues that align with your messaging
For example, if you’re a freelance writer and offer two edits before charging additional fees, include that information in your contract along with the cost of subsequent edits. Professional documentation helps clients and businesses stay on the same page.
2. Triple-check written communications for clarity
Written communications—including SMS or text messages, web content, and email communications—can be easily misinterpreted. Research shows that while people think their emails are understood 90% of the time, but research shows it’s closer to 50%. Without things like body language and tone of voice to clarify written statements, they can come out the wrong way.
Tools like Grammarly can help you identify your tone and reduce miscommunications. However, regardless of the tools you’re using to improve your grammar, punctuation, and tone, it’s still a good idea to read and reread written communications and ensure they’re conveyed correctly.
Another strategy is to ask other people in your office to read your email drafts before you send them and help you identify things that could be misconstrued or misunderstood.
3. Be an active listener
It’s important that you solve clients’ problems, but a problem-solving mindset shouldn’t prevent you from actually listening.
Listening to your customers isn’t limited to verbal communication either. While you should actively listen during phone calls or meetings, you may also need to use active listening skills when reading emails, reviews, or customer surveys.
Becoming defensive when a customer critiques your business or services is a natural response. It’s also super unhelpful. When you hear feedback you don’t like, try to understand the frustration from your client’s point of view.
The best way to show you’re an active listener is to be mindful of your clients’ needs. As you get to know your clients, you may find that someone needs more frequent check-ins from you, while another requires more visual aids to understand your work, and a third needs more one-on-one support. Adapting your communication style based on clients’ needs will improve your relationships and reduce the risk of misunderstandings.
3. Be an active listener
It’s important that you solve a client’s problem, but a problem-solving mindset may prevent you from actually listening. Learning to be an active listener is a key skill to any communication.
Note that listening to your customer isn’t limited to verbal communication. While you should actively listen during phone calls or meetings, you may also need to use active listening skills when reading emails, reviews, or customer surveys.
Becoming defensive when a customer critiques your business or services is a natural response. It’s also super unhelpful. When you hear feedback you don’t like, try to understand the frustration from your client’s point of view.
The best way to show you’re an active listener is to be mindful of your clients’ needs. As you get to know clients, you may find that one client needs more frequent check-ins from you, another requires more visual aids to understand your work, and a third needs more one-on-one support. Adapting your communication based on client needs will improve your relationship and reduce the risk of misunderstandings.
Dealing with difficult clients and miscommunications
Miscommunication happens, even with the best intentions. Sometimes, client expectations aren’t in line with your company’s services. Other times it may be due to technical hiccups or deliverable delays.
Regardless of a problem’s origin, how you respond to difficult clients and misaligned expectations will directly impact your business’s success.
Research shows that customers are 2.4x as likely to stay with a company if it resolves their issues quickly. The faster you can resolve problems, the more likely you are to improve customer loyalty.
Focus on specifics
If a client is unhappy with your work, clarify what they’re unhappy with. The only way you can improve what you’re offering—and potentially salvage the relationship—is if you know exactly what the problem is.
This may be a good opportunity to review your original contract. For example, say that a client requests a second edit to your content, but you deny it because the requested changes are too extensive. When you review your contract, you see that your client’s upset because it says you provide two edits free of charge. To fix this misunderstanding, you can provide the current edit free of charge and potentially update future contracts to specify the extent of editing before additional charges are added.
When you understand your customers’ specific pain points, you are better positioned to respond appropriately and find a solution you can both live with.
Don’t burn bridges
If a client is challenging—for example, they continually call outside of stated office hours or make demands outside of your scope of work—you can choose not to work with them anymore. It’s one of the benefits of being an independent contractor.
However, dropping clients comes with an inherent risk. Clients often communicate with others in their industry. If a professional treats them rudely, they may share that experience with their peers. This could prevent new/prospective clients from trusting you.
Setting and enforcing clear boundaries can eliminate the need to fire clients in the first place. However, if clients remain difficult to work with even after you’ve set and enforced your boundaries, you may need to let them go to protect your mental and emotional health. How you choose to cease working with that client will impact your ability to continue onboarding new business in the future.
Remember that previous clients network and can discuss your reputation. So, even if you know you would never want to work with a potential client again, it’s important to stay professional and do your best to satisfy their needs.
You might make it clear that you will not take on additional commissions from a particular client, but you will finish your current project. Or maybe you know a fellow professional who would be willing to take them on instead. Let the client know you think your colleague might be a good fit for them instead of blaming the client for being hard to work with.
Respond to negative feedback and reviews
If a difficult situation with your clients spills into public reviews, it’s important to address them. Another important strategy for improving customer relations is to respond to customer reviews, including (and maybe especially) the negative ones. Research shows that 87% of customers expect companies to reply to negative reviews, ideally within a week of posting.
Customer reviews show future customers what they can expect from your business. If you ignore negative reviews, you send the message that you will ignore problems too. But if you respond to negative reviews, apologize for any dissatisfaction, and offer to help resolve the issue where possible, you show potential clients that you value customer relations and will do your best to resolve problems quickly.
Best practices for emailing clients effectively
Email is one of the best tools you have for direct communications with your clients. In addition to improving your clarity and transparency, here are some client relationship management best practices as it pertains to email to consider when creating emails for your clients.
Branding your emails
Branding your emails ensures that your customers can recognize them at a glance. In addition to following email design best practices and including a personalized email signature, some steps you can take to brand your emails include:
- Use the same font and color choices on all your emails
- Maintain a consistent tone and voice
- Use an email template for a cohesive aesthetic
- Include your logo at the top of your emails
- Standardize subject lines
Automated emails that save time
One of the keys to client relationship management is being able to communicate both effectively and efficiently. Automating communications can help you do both.
For example, email automation allows you to:
- Send welcome emails to new clients instantly
- Remind clients of project milestones or contract terms
- Send payment reminders to clients if they haven’t settled their bills yet
- Send updates to large groups of customers
- Follow up with unresponsive clients
- Send confirmation emails to provide a good experience when someone inquires, books, or schedules with you
But email isn’t the only thing that can be automated. You can also automate task reminders for yourself and your team to keep projects moving smoothly.
By automating communications, you empower yourself to think more clearly about the words you’re using and plan your communications strategically rather than simply reacting. This means that you’re less likely to miscommunicate and more likely to provide clear, transparent communication across the board.
Tools that improve client communication
Automation and client portal software can help keep your communications organized and consistent in one polished, branded place.
Using a CRM or client relationship management tool to consolidate your communications in one place
One of the easiest ways to miscommunicate is when messages and emails get lost. Instead of sifting through endless email threads, it’s helpful to keep everything in one place. You can manage your communications more efficiently with customer relationship management (CRM) software or a clientflow platform like HoneyBook.
If you work with a team, a clientflow platform can also keep you all on the same page about what information has already been communicated to a client. Plus, you can track your project progress and see if you’re still waiting on something from your client, like an invoice payment. Some platforms also include a client portal to give your customers more visibility.
Using a client portal to stay organized and manage projects with clients
Client portal software can mean the difference between organized communication and chaotic projects.
HoneyBook’s new, updated Client Portal actually allows you to centralize all client communications in one polished place. Its customizability allows you to use your own brand colors, fonts, and header images (with no design experience required!) This means that all communications between you and your clients remain visually-cohesive, giving your customers a seamless, branded experience from start to finish.
With HoneyBook’s Client Portal, you can also view all communications and client files in one place and assign tasks to keep projects moving. This type of client relationship management tool empowers you to be proactive with your client communications instead of reactively responding to client complaints as they pop up.Client portal tooling puts your brand front and center while also delivering one centralized space for you and your clients.
Improve client relationship management with HoneyBook
Client relationship management is a major aspect of any business venture. To do it successfully takes strategy, empathy, and the right systems.
HoneyBook can help. As a clientflow platform with a new updated Client Portal, HoneyBook facilitates the entire process of selling and delivering your services. That includes centralizing every project, file, task, and message for your clients.
When all your tools are in one place, you can deliver a better client experience—and grow your business with confidence.
