Client Communication: Everything Agencies Need to Know

Not everyone is a natural-born talent when it comes to managing client relations. But it’s essential if you want to improve your client communication.

So, how do you communicate with your client base, and how do you do it effectively? In this blog post, I’ll cover everything you need to know about client communication.

What is client communication?

Client communication refers to any interaction or exchange of information that takes place between a client and the business or organization that is providing services to them. This interaction is crucial for building relationships, understanding client needs, and delivering services your clients will love.

Over the years, communication has evolved significantly, adopting various shapes and forms, for instance:

• Written communication: This includes emails, text messages, and chatting via business messaging apps, which allow for quick and documented exchanges of information.

• Verbal communication: This encompasses phone calls and face-to-face conversations, providing a more personal and immediate way to communicate and resolve issues.

• Non-verbal communication: This involves the use of facial expressions, touch, eye contact, hand movements, and other body language cues to convey messages and emotions, often complementing verbal communication.

4 benefits of great client communication

The relationship between a client and an agency is collaborative. This means it requires specific communication methods that work for both parties. And the client communication process you choose is not set in stone—you must constantly improve it.

Let’s look at five key benefits that effective client communication brings to agencies.

1. More clarity: Communication is an essential tool for understanding what the client actually needs. Asking the right questions and communicating efficiently can help you better understand your client’s pain points and their business goals. If you clearly communicate your future actions, you’ll be able to manage client expectations properly, eliminating any misunderstandings or confusion.

2. Satisfying wants and needs: In almost any relationship between a client and a service provider, the client’s needs and requirements are likely to change. If you have a framework for effective communication in place, you should be able to adapt to any changes. With that said, companies with great communication abilities don’t just react to client requests, they actively engage with them. This role is usually attributed to a success team, whose role is to help the client succeed.

3. More business in the future: It can be very beneficial to interact with your clients regularly, even after you’ve finished their project. A VoIP phone can be a valuable addition to your client engagement toolkit and it can allow you to play back calls and video meetings so clients can review important discussions and decisions made during previous interactions. Clients are the happiest when they know that they can count on you. A newsletter, phone call, or an occasional in-person visit usually does the trick. However, failing to stay in touch with the client could lead them to your competitors.

4. Valuable feedback: Clients look at your business from a unique angle—they’re both on the outside of your business and the inside since they’re working with you. Thanks to this, communicating with your customers openly can bring you lots of helpful feedback, which you can use to improve your product or service.

The risks of poor communication

Effective communication is essential for building trust and establishing a strong business reputation. Conversely, poor communication can have significant negative effects on the client's perspective.

1. Impact on client trust: Poor communication can undermine confidence in your capabilities, leading clients to question their choice to work with you.

2. Financial repercussions: Inadequate or unclear messaging can cause misunderstandings and misaligned expectations between parties, potentially resulting in financial losses.

3. Operational consequences: Poor communication can impede project progress, causing delays and increased costs due to the need for additional resources or time.

How to define a client communication strategy

The secret to good client communication is a carefully designed communication strategy.

Before you define it, you need to understand the elements of positive customer communication, how they lay the groundwork for the strategy, and eventually help create healthier client relationships:

• Transparency: Being honest and upfront with your clients is essential because it provides you more security with your client in the long run and because you’re at least partially responsible for your client’s success.

• Self-awareness: Recognizing your role and distinguishing it from the role of your client should be pretty straightforward. This distinction will help inform how you communicate with the client. It will also help you be more open toward collaboration and accept new ideas and other perspectives, which will keep your client happy.

• Compassion: Considering your agency as an integral part of the client’s team forces you to put yourself in their shoes. This makes it easy to align with the goal of most businesses: growth. Understanding the client’s angle will also help you communicate results to them. Compassion goes a long way in communicating with potential clients.

• Flexibility: Adjusting to different personality types will do wonders for your client communication efforts. Some clients will want a more personal relationship, while others will prefer to keep things strictly professional. In any case, recognizing how the clients want to be treated, and being flexible about it will help ensure your communication strategy works.

Now, define your communication strategy.

To do this:

• Determine the number of levels for your strategy: organization-wide, project-specific, and stakeholder-specific, from broadest to narrowest.

• At the organization-wide level, specify the customer communication tools for your organization. At the stakeholder-specific level, decide how often to update key stakeholders and others.

• Identify key stakeholders and their hierarchy (internal, external, third-party) to prioritize activities, typically focusing on internal stakeholders first.

• Gather client information and define communication rules for each stakeholder, including contact details, communication frequency, timeline, and preferences.

With all levels, stakeholders, their hierarchy, and rules set, your team will know when and how to communicate with clients.

Client communication best practices

1. Systematize your agency’s communications

Systematization is the key to making your agency’s processes repeatable and reliable at scale—and client communication is definitely a process.

To systematize your communications, start by documenting everything. This includes your agency’s communication policies and procedures regarding the “who”, “what”, “when”, and “how” of communication.

Then, make this documentation accessible to your team and clients. With your SPP client portal, you can easily add a sidebar option for documentation and a knowledge base covering client communication. This will help everyone involved stay on the same page and avoid miscommunications.

2. Define clear roles and responsibilities

With any process, you need to have a clear understanding of who is responsible for what. The same is true for client communication.

At your agency, who is responsible for communicating with specific clients? Is it the project manager? The account manager? The whole team? Be sure to answer this question before moving forward. Once you have a clear understanding of who is responsible for communication, you can start to delegate tasks and put systems in place.

With SPP, it’s easy to assign specific tasks to team members and track their progress. This way, you can be sure that the right person is always responsible for communication—and that tasks are getting done in a timely manner.

3. Schedule regular check-ins

One of the best ways to improve communication with your clients is to schedule regular check-ins—both formal and informal.

Formal check-ins could be weekly or bi-weekly calls or video conferences. These meetings should have a specific agenda and purpose. They’re an opportunity to deliver updates, answer questions, and get feedback from your clients.

Informal check-ins can be anything from a quick chat over email or Slack to grabbing coffee when you’re both in the same city. The goal of these interactions is simply to check in and see how things are going. They’re an opportunity to build relationships and get a pulse on how your clients are feeling.

4. Integrate communication into other workflows

To avoid miscommunications, you need to integrate client communication into your agency’s other workflows—things like:

• customer support

• project management

• billing and invoicing

• account management

By integrating communication into these workflows, you can avoid silos and ensure that everyone is on the same page.

With SPP, this integration is easy—your client email threads are visible across your client portal. This makes it easy to communicate with the full context of your clients and their projects in mind.

5. Give your clients self-service options

This might not seem relevant to effective client communication—but hear me out!

One of the best ways to improve communication with your clients is to give them self-service options. This means giving them the ability to access the information and resources they need without having to rely on your team.

If you don’t have self-service options available, you’re putting unnecessary pressure on you and your team to be reachable 24/7.

A client portal is the perfect way to give your clients self-service options. With SPP, your clients can easily access their project information, documentation, invoices, and more—all in one place.

6. Automate where possible

With any process, there’s always room for automation. And client communication is no different.

There are many ways you can automate your client communication, from setting up automatic reminders to sending out weekly reports. Automation can help you save time and be more efficient in your communication.

With SPP, you can automate many of your client communication tasks with our integrations or via Zapier. This includes things like sending out project updates or billing reminders. That way, you can focus on the tasks that require a personal touch.

Another important aspect is to automate the client onboarding because it takes time off your team’s hands. Instead of onboarding every customer manually, let them onboard themselves, and give it a bit of human touch to elevate the experience.

7. Encourage feedback and act on it

Feedback is essential for any relationship—including the client-agency relationship. It’s the only way to know if you’re meeting your clients’ needs and expectations.

Encourage feedback from your clients at every opportunity. This could be through formal channels, like client satisfaction surveys, or informal channels, like quick conversations after meetings.

Then, take this feedback and use it to improve your communication strategies. If you’re not getting the results you want, make changes until you find a communication style that works for both you and your clients.

8. Be concise and clear

One of the best ways to be a better communicator is to deliver information and express your thoughts in an easy-to-digest way.

To do that, carefully choose words and stay away from complicated diction. Explain your stance and point of view using the correct number of words. Remember to keep your client’s authority and relevance in mind when send them emails.

You should also do this with any new clients you acquire, right from the start of the onboarding process. This will ensure a positive client experience from the start.

9. Be aware of your tone

The tone of voice is fundamental for effective communication with clients. How you use them in conversation will likely reflect the hidden connotations that can always be interpreted in various ways. Ensure your tone isn’t strict, reluctant, or harsh unless you mean it.

Clients are always the happiest when your communication style is professional—and you can achieve this by being sincere and confident. Use language that is unbiased and non-discriminatory, and avoid an accusing tone.

10. Be an active listener

Active listening can help you absorb clients’ instructions more precisely. As an active listener, you’ll be able to clarify any doubts on time, ask critical questions, and ensure you understand the client.

Listening actively can also help avoid confusion and prevent project delays due to inefficient information absorption. It also enables you to keep your team more productive, reduce the time and effort needed to finish a client project, improve your communication, and build a better business relationship with every client.

Psychological techniques in communication

Effective communication involves not only sharing information but also recognizing the emotional impact our words have on others. Here are three techniques to help you achieve this goal.

NURS technique

This technique stands for:

• Notice: Pay attention to the other person’s words, tone, and body language.

• Understand: Make sure you grasp their perspective before responding.

• Reflect: Reflect back what they say to ensure understanding and show empathy.

• Summarize: ask for clarification if needed.

Chameleon effect

This phenomenon refers to the way people subtly mimic others’ body language. By being aware of the chameleon effect, you can use it to create a sense of rapport with your audience:

• mirror their words

• imitate their tone or pace

Positive language

Using positive language in communication can have numerous benefits, including:

• Boosts confidence: Positive language helps individuals feel more confident and empowered, leading to increased motivation and productivity.

• Fosters a supportive environment: A positive tone creates an atmosphere where people feel comfortable sharing their thoughts and ideas, encouraging collaboration and creativity.

• Promotes healthy relationships: Positive language helps build trust and strengthens relationships by avoiding criticism and promoting empathy and understanding.

Frequently asked questions

Over to you

Communicating effectively is crucial for the success of any project. However, some agencies still struggle to put processes in place and use tools that make things easier.

With the information provided in this blog post, I hope you’ve learned more about client communication and how you can make it better. Remember to approach it from a strategic standpoint, and don’t forget there’s a human on the other side.