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Start Designing

in my experience, people get really worried about coming up with too many ideas because they're afraid they're gonna have to make them all happen. But this is your opportunity to go wild, get creative and really think about what all you could do as part of your client. Alright. You have mapped out your client experience as it is right now. You have noticed where there are opportunities, where things go really well and you've taken note of where there might be some friction. Now it's time to start designing the 2.0 version of your businesses client experience in this life. Listen, I'm gonna walk you through a bunch of examples, get your juices flowing and I challenge you to get creative. Sky's the limit for how you want to design your client experience. Don't worry, we'll make a plan so that it's reasonable in the next lesson. But first let's get creative. So again, we're taking a look at the same map that we've been looking at. So to get started actually designing your client experienc...

e. Let's start from scratch in your workbook, you'll find a fresh map that you can use to start jotting down ideas. Again, this is your opportunity to turn each touch point into a unique experience for your client. There is no reason to hold back at this point. We can always tone it down later. This is your opportunity to get creative. Now, I don't know your business, I don't know what your current client experience is like. I don't know your brand, but I've got a bunch of examples to hopefully get your juices flowing so that you can design an experience that works for you and your clients. The first example that I want to share with you is Marie Pullen. Now Marie is a phenomenal designer, but most recently her expertise has shifted to a piece of software called notion. And Marie was one of the first people to start creating content about notion and she started a Youtube channel that Youtube channel is her core point of discovery for the clients that she works with on their notion, strategy on Marie's Youtube channel. She has a bunch of informative videos. They walk people through different notion features, different setups and different ways that she organizes her own life using notion. Those videos get tens of thousands or millions of views and they help new people discover Marie and what she's all about. In terms of her notion strategy. Those videos also answer questions that people are searching for. So they're either searching on Youtube where they're searching on google or they're searching somewhere else. And because Marie's videos are designed to answer those questions, it means her videos pop up and again, help people discover her brand. Marie's also working with the Youtube algorithm to ensure that the titles, she selects the thumbnails, She selects the descriptions that she writes are helping her videos get surfaced when maybe people are watching other videos about notion and then finally these videos are a phenomenal place for her to really highlight her value for personal experimentation. Marie is always showing how she's improving on the way she organizes her life with notion and that value for experimentation, I think is really infectious. When it comes to how you watch these videos. It's not just a simple how to, it's really a whole different way of thinking about your life or your work using this particular tool and that's a key part of Marie's brand. And so when you decide, oh, I think I'd like to buy Marie's course notion, mastery. You're thinking about it with that piece of her brand strategy in mind. Of course, consciously, you don't know that, but subconsciously you have that in mind and that sort of setting the expectation for what you're going to get out of that class and why investing in it is the right choice for you. So that's Marie, that's the discovery touch point. Um, and yes, this is marketing, but it's also setting the stage for a phenomenal client experience. Next, we're gonna look at my company, Yellow House Media and I want to show you sort of how our initial inquiry touch point works. So once a new prospect has discovered our business, you know, they go poking around on our website, they're going to land on our services page. They want to know. All right, what does this whole full service podcast production thing really mean that page explains what it means, kind of what we do. We've got our services guide there that they can download, but then when they're ready to actually say, hey, can we talk about working together on my show? They're going to come to this intake form. This intake form is not just a simple contact form. Instead it starts to gather key information for our initial consultation. It's going to ask questions about like, what's your goal for this show? What's your vision for this show? How does it fit into the rest of your business? These are questions that I always ask in our sales consultations and I still ask them, but bringing that information in ahead of time not only helps, may be prepared for those conversations, but it also see signals to the client. These are the kinds of things this company cares about, they care about what my vision is, they care about what my goals are. They care about how this fits into the business overall, and that sets the stage for then their relationship with us. If they're not interested in working with a team that cares about those things and there are reasons why, but you might not be interested in that, then we're not the production team for them, but if they are, then that signals again that we are a great fit for them. Another thing this inquiry form does is it helps the client get their head around why they're reaching out so often before we kind of had this particular intake form in place. We'd have phone folks contact us and be like I want to talk about starting a podcast and we'd be like great, what do you want to talk about? They didn't know, someone told them oh you should have a podcast and so they found the first podcast production team that they could come up with and thought oh we'll talk to them and this will be easy. It would be nice if that's how things worked, that's not how things work. And so having an intake form like this as part of our client experience is actually a service to the client. So the questions that we ask on this form help them wrap their heads around their podcast strategy before they even ever talk with us as their production team. And then finally this intake form also sort of gestures toward our value for process and strategy, a big part of how we work and why we work the way we work is because we love process, we love love love love efficient repeatable processes and we're really keen on strategy as well as and so this form underlines those values and amplifies those values for our clients again before they ever actually talk with us. Another touch point that I want to look at is evaluation. In other words, what what does that process look like for a client who is considering buying from you and I think about about two folks on instagram who I have learned so much from over the last few years. My name is Jason and Lauren pack their personal trainers and full disclosure. I am their customer and I think that's part of why I find their customer experience, their client experience so compelling. The social media content that they put out matches their client experience perfectly. And this is really helpful for evaluation because it means that the content they're putting out doesn't need to be promotional to be effective. I know that watching their videos on instagram or listening to their podcast or um, learning through the captions on their posts. That what I see there is what I'm going to get when I buy from them and that is it's so true. It makes the buying decision for me as a customer so easy. I know they know what they're talking about, I know that they're generous, I know that they provide all sorts of options for the exercises that they show and when I go into my app that I pay for that stuff is all there as well. The other thing that their content does is it exudes inclusive values. Jason and Lauren are all about physical fitness for every body and so their content online and in their product matches those values and it's so welcoming and so accessible for a whole range of different types of bodies. All of that goes to helping the prospect feel really safe purchasing and that safety again is a big part of their brand strategy as well. All right, let's look at Yellow house media again this time, the touch point is new client onboarding. So new client onboarding is when you take a new client and you help them get started. So it's information, it's checklists, its files, it's those initial communications that really get a started and it can be a lot to handle at one time, it can be a real firehose of stuff that they need to get on top of or share with you, especially when it comes to podcast production. So the system that we've developed is that each of our clients gets their own drive folder and within that drive folder it gets pre populated with a bunch of templates. So, you know, our design, your podcast premise template is in there, our podcast trailer template is in there are key topics, template is in there and I get all that stuff in there before a client ever even has access to that folder. Then there is also a checklist in that folder that walks them through either what we need them to do or what we need them to share with us whether we're starting from scratch or whether we're taking over production of an existing show, so it walks them through all of that, it tells them how to use the older it gets them ready for our kick off a consultation and that helps our clients feel really taken care of. That's a huge part of our brand strategy as well. So we've talked about our brand strategy being fun, we've talked about it being super process oriented, but it's also really important to us that our clients feel like they can rely on us, like we have got their backs and they don't have to worry about a whole bunch of stuff that they don't want to have to worry about. And so this onboarding process really helps to emphasize that and and starts the relationship off with them understanding just how much we're there to make it easy for them. Alright, one more example, this example is evolved finance, their bookkeeping agency, they're my bookkeeping agency and they do a phenomenal job with project communication. So that's the touch point that we're looking at here. How you keep your client informed as a project goes on now with bookkeeping. That is an ongoing process. Right. I have been with this bookkeeping agency I think for eight years now and so project communication has gone on that whole time. I get a monthly email from them with a bookkeeping update, a dashboard, the months reports and anything that they noticed that I need to be kind of keeping my eye on. So that's the first piece of communication. Um they also do client workshops. So I get an email every month about whatever the workshop is going to be for that month. And then they also regularly send out updates recently. They sent out an update about you know, kind of how to think about the current state of the economy and what we need to be doing with our businesses to prepare for what might be a downturn, what might not be a downturn, what will definitely be instability. And it's those kinds of client communications that helped me as a client feel really sir reported. And it also really emphasizes for them their expertise in working with the kinds of businesses that I run. Um and also they're sort of strategic perspective on what bookkeeping and understanding your money can do for your business, not something that as a client I really appreciate. So I really appreciate their process oriented communication strategy. So that's a bunch of ideas that hopefully have your wheels turning and have you thinking about all the ways that you could revitalize your client experience. So again, go into your workbook, get out that fresh client experience map and start drawing out all of the touch points that you want to make sure to include in your client experience and start making notes on ideas of how you could utilize your brand strategy and your positioning and how you want your clients to feel to really take that client experience from something that's practical and works well and turns it into something that's truly extraordinary. Remember a well designed client experience drives sales and reduces marketing time when you are thinking about this client experience process, I want you to be thinking as much about marketing and its sales and reaching those revenue goals as you are thinking about, oh, I'm adding this to do list or I'm adding this project to my plate and oh, I don't know if I can do that. This is all serving the end goal of making your business easier to run. So it might feel like a lot right now. But this really goes a long way to ensuring that your business grows without you having to do a ton of extra work. So get creative, go wild and then meet me back for our last lesson on how to make a plan to make it happen.