Improve Client Relationships and Increase Client Retention With These Systems and Strategies
Happy clients stick around longer and shout your praises to their network, friends, and colleagues.
We all know it’s far more valuable to maintain an existing client than to land a new client, so keeping our clients happy clearly benefits our bottom line. For many CEOs and business leaders, having happy, well-cared-for clients is also an important core value.
But how do you know if your clients are truly happy? And how do you know how well you’re managing client relationships?
It can be hard to tell. Many CEOs assume that everyone is happy until a problem pops up or a client leaves.
Because we are always working on being more proactive than reactive, a “wait and see” approach isn’t going to cut it when it comes to monitoring, measuring, and improving client relationships and retention.
At Elevate, we’re passionate about building long-term, meaningful relationships, and we have developed a number of systems and strategies to support this priority.
Keep reading to see what mistakes you may be making in this area and what you can do to improve your own client relationships and retention!
5 client relationship + retention mistakes to avoid
You don’t always know when you’re making a mistake with your client relationships. You may have a client who doesn’t speak up, so you assume everything is working well, and then suddenly… they’re mad and ending their contract.
We’ve also seen many cases where client relationships aren’t prioritized because there is a set beginning and end to the work or project as opposed to an ongoing retainer. But even if you’re not meant to keep a client forever, you still want to ensure they have a positive experience so they speak highly of your business and recommend you to others when their work with you is complete.
Here are the top 5 client relationship and retention mistakes you want to avoid:
Being reactive. This looks like waiting until there is a problem to try to solve it. Great client retention includes identifying potential issues while they are still small (or before they’ve even occurred) and solving them proactively.
Being inflexible with your services or solutions. This happens when a client signs up for a service that isn’t the best fit or when they have a slightly unorthodox need or request to make a service work for them. Unnecessary inflexibility can kill a client relationship in a snap.
Poor communication. Unclear, inconsistent, and closed communication leads to more unhappy clients than almost anything else.
Only focusing on problems. Don’t forget to identify wins and celebrate the milestones and achievements with your clients!
Failing to reflect. Whenever feedback is gathered or shared (whether it’s positive or negative), you and your team should spend time digging into the information and reflecting on what you can or should do differently in the future.
How to improve client relationships and retention
The number one way to improve client relationships is simply to care about the people you work with.
When you bring compassion, empathy, and a desire to serve to your work, your clients will naturally feel valued, appreciated, and supported. Making sure your team members and employees share these values is also an important part of building and maintaining a client-focused culture.
At Elevate, we work with a number of different CEOs, leaders, and organizations, which gives us a sneak peek into what’s working and what needs to change when it comes to client retention. We also prioritize this area in our own business, so we have a number of proven systems and smart strategies to help you!
A 360-degree structure for internal communication + collaboration
In order to build strong partnerships with clients, you have to be a well-oiled machine internally. We recommended creating meeting structures that include individual contributors and leadership across different departments to avoid creating silos of information. When all departments and teams are connected and working in different combinations, detail is missed.
Proactive engagement with clients
We've built a forward-thinking experience with our clients thanks to our Quarterly Action Plan meetings. This is the perfect time for collaboration. We supplement these quarterly sessions with consistent check-ins to celebrate client wins and open the door for any changes that need to be made.
A flexible, growth-minded focus
At Elevate, we're always willing to adapt and evolve based on client needs and how our team is functioning. Our entire process is built to encourage everyone involved (including the client) to be able to identify gaps and propose solutions. When you establish a commitment to adapting, evolving, and working together, it will benefit your internal team and your clients!
Automate and streamline your client retention processes
As you focus on improving your own client relationships and retention, there are platforms and software we highly recommend to automate the process where you can without losing the human connection and touch that matters most.
Start with a CRM to automate as much as possible.
We recommend Dubsado! It's highly customizable and is easily our MVP platform. When it comes to automating workflows, we typically have check-in emails scheduled with key links or information pre-filled, but we set up the system so we can customize the emails and write them specifically to each individual client before they send them.
We also use Dubsado to create really pretty, professional proposals, forms, and questionnaires that are easy to use and on-brand. (It adds a nice WOW factor to the onboarding process!)
Use a Project Management System to keep everyone on track.
When you have different people in different departments communicating with clients, it's essential to keep everyone on the same page. We do this with ClickUp, our preferred project management system. It's also the place where we keep track of important notes and details about each of our clients, from their coffee order to what they enjoy doing in their free time and future goals they share with us.
Create custom Zaps to save time.
Did you know you can use Zapier to connect almost any two software or platforms? We love using custom Zaps to schedule little treats to send to our clients, like a random Starbucks card for a mid-week pick-me-up!
If you need advice from a client relationship expert or help operationalizing your client retention efforts, you can always schedule a 1:1 Operations Call with our founder, Ashley Carlson.
We’re here to support you!
