Clients are the bread and butter of a service-based business.
You must nurture these relationships to satisfy your clients and satisfy them with your service. This will keep the revenue coming and put you in their good books, encouraging them to refer you to their peers.
However, every client and their needs are different. Managing these relationships with a generalized structure or process can only do so much. Embrace the diversity of clients you deal with and tweak your processes to deliver the best client experience possible.
In this article, we’ll explore the practices and tools you can depend on to manage client relationships at scale.
What is client management?
Client management refers to all practices that focus on delivering an excellent experience to your clients. It encourages customers and prospects to keep or start doing business with you.
While managing clients, you need to manage ongoing communication and resolve their issues as they come in. Make sure they are satisfied with your support offerings. This will help you retain more clients and nurture a happy working relationship.
If you communicate with clients on WhatsApp, try leveraging Cooby to organize your inbox and ensure no client message slips away. Moreover, Cooby offers a perfect solution to sync WhatsApp chats with your CRM, helping you keep all conversations in one place.
Benefits of client management
Unsurprisingly, there are several advantages to focusing on sales and client relationship management, especially for small businesses.
- Prioritizes customer service. Effectively managing customer relationships helps track customer interactions, reducing the chances of negative experiences. 78% of customers have backed out of a purchase due to poor service experiences.
- Improves retention rate. It focuses on maintaining long-term customer relationships rather than just pursuing one-time sales. This lets you increase your customers' lifetime value and earn more revenue per account.
- Prepares you for growth. Initially, managing customer relationships without specific tools or strategies might work. However, as a business grows, this becomes unsustainable. Using a good client management app from the start sets a company up for future success and helps it scale smoothly.
- Increases sales and marketing efficiency. With a CRM, your team will save time figuring out where to find customer information or the next steps. A CRM can boost productivity by centralizing all customer data, helping the team work more effectively. You can even integrate CRM with WhatsApp to keep all conversations in one place.
Five ways to effectively manage client relationships
Below are a few standard best practices that help you manage clients effectively.
1. Communicate effectively
No client would appreciate you ghosting them when they expect communication from you. As an agency, you likely work with different clients, and they would expect you to support them. Even if you cannot resolve their issues promptly, it is best to respond to their message and let them know you have taken a note. Otherwise, they might perceive you don’t care.
It’s best to keep them in the loop as much as possible. However, some conversations are prone to slipping away when working with many clients.
If you use WhatsApp primarily for communication, it’s best to leverage Cooby. It helps you triage chats, organize your inbox, and sync WhatsApp chats with a CRM. With the tool, you have productivity-packed features that let you easily manage customer communications at scale.
On the other hand, if email is your primary communication channel, Superhuman will deliver similar functionality to increase your productivity.
2. Be brutally honest
When you lie or keep your client in the shadows, they’re well aware of it or have ways to find out what’s happening. You should always be transparent with your clients and maintain a relationship with mutual trust and respect.
For example, if you’re a creative agency and fail to deliver the creative on the promised date, be honest about why you didn’t file it. First, keep a buffer to avoid such missed deliveries, but tell your clients the truth when they happen. It will reward you with a higher retention rate in the long run.
Give clients a heads-up a few days before if the project deliveries don’t go as planned. Honest communication and setting new expectations help your clients better manage processes at their end rather than wondering what’s happening.
3. Build trust with authenticity
Be authentic to your clients and communicate what’s achievable and what’s not. Overpromising and underdelivering can affect your relationship with them.
Be genuine and authentic when dealing with them, even when you convey an update that may not be what they expect.
4. Set expectations realistically
Make promises that you can keep. For example, if you create a website design for them, keep a buffer of a few days for anything unprecedented before the final delivery date.
You can set processes to follow and what to expect when there’s scope creep. Make sure the client aligns with the scope.
5. Monitor key performance indicators (KPIs)
Regularly check the key performance indicators set for the project and be prepared to answer any customer queries. If something isn’t working right, or there’s a problem, try to look for a solution before communicating it to the client.
Your clients would appreciate your supporting them in solving their problems, reducing their burden, and delivering a good customer experience.
Top 5 Client Management Software in 2024
Below are some popular client management tools organizations use to manage client relationships efficiently.
Cooby
Cooby simplifies the way customer-facing teams handle WhatsApp conversations. It enhances WhatsApp by integrating it with a CRM and adding productivity tools like Inbox Zero, reminders, and notes.
The main advantage of Cooby is its ability to sort WhatsApp chats into different tabs. This organization allows users to prioritize essential conversations. For instance, you could have a tab called "clients" Whenever there's an update, you can go directly to this tab and respond quickly. Updates from your clients will always appear in this tab.
Source: Cooby
It helps you concentrate on your clients’ needs, respond quickly, and secure deals across various channels.
HubSpot CRM
HubSpot CRM enables businesses to manage their customers, sales, and services effectively. It
integrates seamlessly with third-party apps like Gmail and Microsoft, facilitating collaboration and data flow. The dynamic dashboard lets you analyze data and better manage client relationships.
Source: HubSpot
The CRM easily connects and syncs with your WhatsApp using Cooby. It helps you perform HubSpot tasks directly through your WhatsApp.
ClickUp
ClickUp helps teams manage their work more effectively. It allows teams to plan projects together, monitor progress, and communicate with clients through shared comments and documents. The software is known for how easy it is to customize and meet users’ specific needs.
Source: ClickUp
ClickUp lets you set up custom stages in your sales pipeline and easily move deals through these stages using a drag-and-drop feature. It automatically assigns tasks to team members and sends reminders, cutting down on repetitive tasks.
Keap
Keap keeps track of all your conversations with clients, making it more straightforward for you to stay connected. It automates emails and schedules meetings effortlessly, allowing you to focus on building relationships at scale.
Source: Keap
You get a variety of email templates tailored for managing client relationships. It provides reports on campaign performance and uses AI to suggest ways to improve.
Freshsales
Freshsales simplifies daily operations with seamless workflow automation. Its AI assistant, Freddy AI, Delivers vital insights to identify issues and opportunities, automates recurring tasks, and supports self-service with chatbots for minor problems.
Source: Freshsales
It’s known for boosting sales team performance by generating more leads through smart sales campaigns.
Make every client relationship count
Managing business relationships is getting trickier with competition on the rise. The moment your clients have a bad experience with your team, the next thing you know, a competitor is knocking on their digital doors. You need to care for these relationships and help them grow with time.
It helps you be more than just a service provider; you become a valuable partner.
Use Cooby to make every client interaction count and be super productive.
