Lessons

Lesson Info

Make a Plan

Alright, we've taken stock of your current client experience, we've thought about your brand strategy and how you can use that as a jumping off point for improving your client experience, then we got creative about how you're going to improve your client experience and now it's time to make a plan because there might be a lot on your mind and I want to make sure that this isn't overwhelming, that you really have an easy, straightforward way of improve moving your client experience, bit by bit, step by step, bottom line, you do not need to make all of the changes that are running through your head right now. In fact you don't have to change everything to make a big improvement. Changing just one or two things implementing one or two ideas can make a huge difference in how a client interacts with your business. So you might have a laundry list of things overhauling your onboarding, sending weekly updates, creating a services, guide, building repeatable processes, etcetera, etcetera. But ...

maybe one of those things would make a really big difference both to you and your clients. Maybe one of those things would help get your clients off on the right foot. Maybe one of those things would make the business operations behind your client experience, smoother, less friction e for you for your team so that everything is more efficient and effective as you're making this plan. I also invite you to think about how software can be a big help. One of the things that can make a client experience really fantastic is some automation that doesn't mean making the process less human. It means making the process more predictable, more supportive. So I'm not a huge fan of automation that um you know, sort of like I said, take the humanity out of working with your business. But I am a huge fan of automation that mean I'm not doing manual labor, that actually makes the process and experience worse for my client. So this is where software comes in for me first. I hi highly recommend some sort of business hub. Fiber workspace is a great option. Dub Sado is a great option. There's another one called 17 hats Wave accounting. There's plenty of software out there that can help you run your business in a really efficient way and that integrates with other parts of your business so you can create those automation that ensure your clients get every step of the process in uh you know, an efficient timeframe. The next kind of software that I love is a client dashboard. I often use notion for those client dashboards or air table also works really well. There's all sorts of different ways you can set it up. You know, the google drive folder that I've been talking about, that sort of a hub for our clients at the production agency that's kind of a client dashboard as well. I know a lot of business owners run their sir services through sort of a google drive folder where everything ends up. So there's lots of inexpensive options with that one as well. When I'm putting together a client dashboard, I'm thinking about what resources do I want to share with a client? What homework can I sort of have embedded right into that dashboard. What plans, what to do list can I add in there? And then I often add a little video of me welcoming them into the business or letting them know how to utilize that dashboard and how we can work together on it. That's a really special way to bring a client into your business and help them feel like yeah, you've got their back. The next thing that I would also highly recommend is getting a scheduling app. This is a great way to take some of that administrative manual labor off your plate instead of going back and forth trying to figure out does this time work, does that time work, you know, can we get this on a recurring appointment instead you send your client a link and they book a time that works for them. It took me way too long to switch over to this, that was, you know, six or seven years ago now. But once I did switch over to it, I cannot imagine going back to the old fashioned way of scheduling things. So some, some options that you might want to look at for scheduling acuity, Kallen lee cozy cow, the little screenshot that you see there is my cozy cow booking page for a 30 minute consultation with me, super easy for a client to find the times that you're available, enter their information and it appears right on your calendar. It really does take so much of the guesswork and so much of the extra work out of scheduling and that can be a huge boon to your client experience. And then finally the last one that I would recommend is thinking about software for passwords, this is the kind of software that allows you to not only save and archive your own passwords, manage your own passwords, but it also makes it easy for your clients to share passwords with you or for you to share passwords with your clients. So things like last pass or keeper are really helpful here, incorporating software systems like these into your client experience makes you look like a fantastic professional. It helps people feel really taken care of and it streamlines your business operations every single time. You can kind of take one of these administrative functions out of your active workload and give it to a piece of software, it allows you to spend more time on the really human parts of your client experience, it helps you have the time to help your clients feel taken care of by you. So let the software take care of you and take care of your clients and that's going to give you the opportunity to take care of your clients better as well. Alright with all of that out of the way, let's talk about actually how to make that plan. So there are three parts that I would recommend you use to think through how you're going to actually tackle improving your client experience. The first thing is that I want to solve any obvious problems or friction points, if I know there's a part of my client experience that just doesn't work or that's causing me too much time and energy to work through or a place where my client often sort of drops off or gets lost. I want to address that point first. So maybe you have one of those points. Maybe you have a few, but those are the projects that are going to be first on my client experience project plan, taking care of any obvious friction points, any obvious problems. So make a note right now, what are those points for you and move them to the top of your list? The next thing I want to look at is what's one thing that I could change one idea that I have that's going to make me more money. And you know, I love thinking about making more money. I think you probably do as well. And as I mentioned, your client experience design is really a way for you to build sales strategy, build marketing strategy into the way your business works on the most fundamental level. So implementing an idea that's gonna make you more money doesn't have to just look like a marketing idea or referral idea. Those are good places to start. But it could also mean that you implement an idea that creates something. Makes a part of the experience much more so streamlined, much more efficient. So it takes you less time to do the same amount of work with your client, therefore increasing your profitability. The less time you spend per client, the more profitable that project is. And so it may not actually make more money sort of from a top line perspective, but from a bottom line perspective you get more profit from the business and you spend less time on the business and that can be huge. So lots of different ways that you can interpret that idea of choosing something that's good to make you money. But that's the second place my mind goes while I'm working on these kinds of plans. And then the third thing that I would work on with making my plan for designing client experience is automating something that will save me time. So again, you know, bringing in a piece of software that can help me shave minutes or hours off of a piece of my project, that's an important thing for me to spend some time on and and for me to work into the plan as I go. Now, once you have those things laid out, once, you know, all right, I want to start here, I want to get these two things done, then I'll do this one and then I'll do this one. We want to make sure there's actually time in your calendar for that. So think about what that actual project looks like, How long is that project going to take you? What kind of resources do you need for it? Is it something you can hire out so that it can happen faster? Is it something you can give to a team member if you have team members, um think about what the project actually entails, Not just this is the thing that I want to do but this is the thing that I want to do. This is the goal. Here are the tasks, here's the timeframe, here's the resources that I need and then build that project into your work flow into your capacity. It might happen this month, it might happen next month but plan out throughout the year. What projects are you going to tackle throughout the year to improve your client experience if you do that by the end of the year, you're going to have a much improved client experience. So again, your workbook is going to be your guide here from start to finish the workbook that's going to help you take stock of your client experience. It's going to help you brainstorm your brand strategy, it's gonna help you design a new client experience and make a plan to implement remember. An intentionally designed client experience is a business growth strategy. I know a lot of business owners have a hard time spending time on anything that's not business growth, that's not thinking about how you're going to get to that next revenue milestone. How you're going to find those next few clients. Client experience design is design for your business growth. It is designed for finding that next set of cli so don't put this on the back burner. This can really really help you improve the revenue that your business brings in the clients that you work with. And it can help you improve your life as well as you spend less time reinventing the wheel as you move through your business on a day to day basis. Next steps, it is almost time for you to really get to work on this first map out your current client experience from discovery to repeat purchase. That's what we did in lesson one next. I want you to flush out your brand strategy and start to identify opportunities for utilizing your brand strategy in your client experience. Third brainstorm new ideas for your clients experience design, that's what we covered in less than three. I give you lots of different examples of how you might tackle that, but you can also think about when you've been a client or when you've been a customer and what kinds of things have wowed you as you've worked with different agencies, different providers or different businesses and then finally make a plan to tackle the change. Little by little, you don't have to do it all to make a big improvement. One thing at a time is going to make your customers feel better. It's gonna make you feel better and it's going to help you grow your business. So best of luck to you as you design your client experience and I am very excited, not just for you, but for your clients and how they're going to feel working with you in the future.