19 Vital Principles of Communication With Your Client

You know, customers are different. Nevertheless, there are always standards of business communication. If you lose a client, it’s your fault. If customers, even the most inadequate, are not satisfied — you will lose. So, you should definitely know the rules and play by them. Stick to the vital principles of communication with the clients developed with the years of active practice and updated and adjusted to the modern age business communications. If you haven’t yet developed such, welcome to look through these ones:

General Principles

Before you adapt any principles of your own, you may look through the general rules that should anyway be followed as a must. Here are they:

1. Quick response

No matter — a call or an e-mail, respond to the customers calls and letters quickly. Within one or two hours would be just perfect. If the answer to the letter requires time (for example, it takes a long time to consider the amount of text to be translated, etc), you should immediately reply to the client, confirm the receipt and warn of possible feedback delays.

2. Customer is like a child

It’s highly recommended to treat your customers like little children. It’s not about treating them without respect or seriousness, etc. The point is that any client may lack understanding in our work, indeed. Remember: what is obvious to us, maybe not at all be obvious to the clients. Do not be lazy to describe every detail enthusiastically, explain each action, try not to use highly specialized terms, etc. Be on the same level with your customers, it always helps to find a common ground. Be on his/her side.

3. Communicate with the client as with a good friend

It’s not about familiarity or something else. This presupposes being friendly and open-minded to the people who are interested in your products or services. Complex speech, arrogance, too much officialdom are a bad habit. This style of communication is more likely to deter the customers from you rather than attract. Talk to your customers like with the friends at a dinner — calmly and confidently. Simple phrases, short sentences, information to the point, plus a bit of humor without familiarity and to the point.

Before you say something to the client, always think twice, keep your head cool and your mind sharp.

4. The number of answers equals the number of questions

Often the clients have a bad habit of asking several questions at once. Unfortunately, none of them has ever presented them in a clear list. We need to do this work for them, to structure the information. So, carefully scan the client’s letters, provide the feedback with the questions answered to them in the same order they were asked. Forget answering any question you like randomly, otherwise — a minus to your karma and to the budget, as well.

5. Regular contact

If the project lasts pretty long and the client does not participate in it, it’s important for us not to disappear, but to remind of ourselves at least every 3 days.. It is best if these are intermediate results, which we assure the client. But if there are no such results, it’s quite simple. “I want to remind you that we are actively working on the video clip, the result will be shown in X days.” Constant contact is VERY important.

6. Report on the work done

If the client asks for something to be done in the letter, it would be perfect to both fulfill the request, and report in the final feedback.

7. Emotions

Even if the client uses inadequate statements, we never respond rudely. We never lose temper. Instead, you should be aware of such a client’s behavior, be ready for any surprises and taking measures to eliminate them. Prevention in dealing with the clients, emotions should not prevail over reason. Never!

8. 24/7 availability

If you deny the idea of staying available to any of your clients all year round day and night, it’s better to do something else. Of course, everyone has working and non-working hours, vacations and seek leaves, etc, but your customers may not know about it: the whole company has no days off, the service is 24/7, we are customized, and we do not adjust the client for ourselves. Simply, you can warn your customers of where you’re out and where be back.

9. Out of kitchen

It’s not necessarily to show all the dirty laundry to your clients. That means that for them it’s in not necessary to know all the details of your work. All the client needs is the positive result: how and when his problem will be solved. Of course, in some cases, one can not live without explanations, but not each and everyone.

10. Empathy and WOW effect

If you can easily do more than the client asks for, that’s just amazing. We definitely do. And her ‘wow’ pretty often.

11. Anticipate

Always try to put yourself in the client’s shoes. Anticipate the needs and problems of the client and suggest solutions, show initiative and discreet: “You may also need to translate the keywords for your page in the App Store” or “I think this video can not be used for advertising on Facebook, etc.”

12. One step ahead

When analyzing the client’s requests, always try to predict the next question and answer timely. The profit from this approach is worth it: the number of letters will be reduced, and the client will think “Wow, these guys look into my soul!” treat them the way you wanna be treated in the shoes of an ordinary consumer.

Email Communication Principles

13. Keep the trace

In the case you need to take a client of your colleague, make it as if nothing happened. Try to pick him or her up and study the case in detail as if it was yours from the very beginning. The entire history of correspondence should also be discovered.

14. Do not change the subject of the letter

In the process of correspondence with the clients, the subject of the letter should not be changed till the very end of the project. By filtering the letters in the client’s mail, people read the entire history of correspondence. If you change anything there, it would be hard to find important information and so on.

In the case you completely change the conversation topic, change the subject of the letter in order to preserve the logic chain of the business correspondence. Simply, start a new branch of correspondence with your topic. Thus, you cannot buy stamps in the postcard icon.

15. Topical subject

This means that the subject of your business email correspondence should stay topical even after it goes to the archives. So, that even in five years you could easily find it and keep the trace of the important data from it, etc.

16. Reply to all

It often happens that several people take part in the correspondence simultaneously. In this case, be sure to answer all of them at once with the help of appropriate button.

17. Summary and call to action

At the end of any letter try to summarize and remind what step you expect from the client. So, you lead the client in the way you need, program his/her actions in the way you need and thereby make life easier for him/her.

18. Skype chat summary

After chatting over Skype, be sure to send a summarizing letter to the clients to keep them tuned in and always aware of the situation. The truth is that you keep safe both, especially in the case of certain force majeure circumstances, negotiations, and other doubtful moments.

In this case, the information will remain in the correspondence history and will not be lost, as well.

19. The final word

Make sure you always have the final word.

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