How to Make Your Clients Happy
Hello service provider. I want to talk to you today about something I think is a huge misconception in the service-based business industry. And that is making a really strong impression on your clients so that they’ll be super happy, want to come back for more, give you referrals, sing your praises, et cetera. I think a lot of people believe that they have to go to great lengths to impress their clients. You have to buy them a Ferrari and send them a gift in the mail and that if you don’t do something extraordinary, they’re going to think you’re bland and not really like you. But here’s the truth, and you already know this because you’ve experienced it as somebody who pays for services. Most service-based businesses suck, they’re not trying to suck, they just don’t know how to execute what they said they’re going to do in a way that is a pleasant experience for their clients.
I’m sure you can think of a half dozen instances where you’ve been less than wowed by an experience that you’ve had with a business. Maybe your web designer fell off the face of the earth, maybe like me, you scheduled a deep tissue massage and it felt like they were tickling you the whole time and it was so frustrating. So in this video, what I want to do is give you four simple ways that you can make a really lasting impression on your clients. And these ways are not going to cost you a lot of money. In fact, several of them are free. Actually, three out of four of them are free and the other one is like a dollar, okay, maybe a little more than a dollar, but still.
1: Create leveraged materials for your service.
This all comes down to getting out of freelancing land and creating a signature service for your business. When you have a signature service, you can create materials that you give to every single client and the great thing about this is that it doesn’t cheapen the client’s experience. It makes it a better, more impactful, more luxurious experience. If you, for example, create a worksheet that you give to every single one of your clients, that worksheet is collateral for your service.
That is something you could charge for and actually makes your service more valuable, not less valuable. As an example, when I used to offer Sales page CPR, I would send my clients a really simple PDF I designed in Canva, that outlined the 10 key sections that they needed to have on their sales page. My clients loved this because it gave them a huge aha about how to build the sales page and do it in this very simplistic way. I am sure there’re ways that you can do that for your clients in your industry as well.
2: Do email check-ins with your clients.
Let’s go back to that graphic designer, a web designer who fell off the face of the earth. Chances are this person hasn’t fallen off the face of the earth. They’ve got your project in their docket, they might be working on it. The problem is they’re not updating you on their progress. Clients tend to get grumpy when they don’t know what’s going on and even if you are working on their project, they want to know that you still exist and didn’t forget about them. This can literally be as simple as sending an email saying, “Hey, I just want to let you know I’m working on your project and everything’s going well. Let me know if you have any questions.” That’s it.
3: Send a card in the mail.
You don’t have to buy your clients gifts. You totally can if you want and it’s not going to hurt you. It’s definitely going to help, but you don’t have to, just by sending a heartfelt personalized card in the mail is going to make your clients feel special. Everybody loves getting snail mail, but here’s the caveat on this. Nobody likes getting a form letter that they know is being sent to everybody else as well.
I have been on the receiving end of this when a service provider I was working with sent me a card that was very generic and vague and I could tell that it was just a part of her regular process of sending cards to clients. And if you want to spend a little bit more money, one thing I love to do is to send people books on Amazon. Books don’t cost that much money and you can pay a little bit extra to get them to gift wrapped and then it feels really special for your client.
4: Do a screencast video or a video and send it to your client.
This is a great idea for anybody who has a virtual business and doesn’t get to see their clients face to face. It’s a great opportunity to say hi to them and go over any kind of work that you did and explain it to them. And you can get really creative with this and do whatever you want to do little check-ins.
