At least once in your life, you have decided to buy a product or take services from that one company whose commercials probably interrupted your favorite song on Youtube or your favorite TV show. Such companies are usually very successful and are often the best in their business.
Have you ever been in a situation where you felt like one of those companies failed to meet your expectations when you were consuming their service or product?
Most of us felt that way, and that’s normal because many companies, even the biggest and most successful ones, don’t know how to communicate with their clients. That’s not as easy as it sounds, but it is essential if you want to be the best in what you do.
How do you establish communication to clients?
Client communication can often be challenging, especially in our business where clients are investing a lot of money in their mobile and web applications, various enterprise and blockchain or design and marketing solutions, etc.
Often clients don’t know what they want and what they need, but they are usually very sure that they know everything about their project. For example, sometimes, they want to develop a mobile application with React Native because somebody told them that React Native is great.
“With React Native, you can cover two mobile platforms with one source code. It’s much cheaper”.
React Native is great, but it might not be a good choice for that specific project. Native mobile development would be a much better option for the client’s application requirements, which is challenging. It’s challenging to communicate to the client that the expensive solution is a much better option than the cheaper one. You need to admit that.
In Async Labs, we’re continuously working on our verbal and non-verbal communication skills because we think it’s crucial to have high-level communication with our current and new clients to grow as a company.
What are the ways of communicating the clients?
Here I’m going to describe our verbal and non-verbal communication with clients through 4 main stages: Self-Awareness, Flexibility, Context, and Empathy.
Self-Awareness
Company Self-Awareness is critical because of only one reason. We need to be realistic about what we are capable of and what we’re not. With every new client and project, a lot of new challenges are coming in the package.
When we know all our pros and cons, we can approach the projects and clients smarter and more professionally. Clients can notice that from miles away, especially when you turn your disadvantages into your goals on which you can work and improve yourself and the company.
Revive all your qualities and flaws, do good work based on your qualities, and communicate all those qualities confidently (don’t brag too much). Moreover, find out how you’re going to change those flaws into your qualities. After you find it out, start fixing those flaws and just enjoy the process.
Constant progress and self-improvements will grow your self-confidence on a personal and company level, in a professional and cooperative sense. This is something sll your clients are going to respect and love.
Flexibility
We can’t communicate with all types of people in the same way. For instance, with a client who is a more open type of person, you will communicate openly. You will not say, for example, “I agree with you, sir.”. With that type of client, it’s ok to communicate more openly.
If you need to emphasize the client as a person in the sentence, say the client’s name. If the client is relaxed and loves to tell jokes, accept that, don’t be afraid, wait for the right moment and tell a joke! Sometimes clients like to go to expensive restaurants, or they love to have a glass of good wine. In those cases, find out where you can have some good food and learn the basics about wines.
It’s essential to be flexible in communication, and “sync” with most types of personalities. When you connect, understand, and synch with the other person, that is called rapport. Then it’s more likely that you will be able to achieve a better relationship with your client. You never know, after the meeting maybe you will all go to a bar or a restaurant and drink a couple of beers or have a few glasses of wine, that’s never bad for business.
Context
In Async, when we talk about the context in communication with clients, we usually say, “it’s not important what you say, but how you say it.”.
When we talk with clients, our work’s quality and our services aren’t questionable, and we need to act like that. Before every meeting, we usually prepare a set of questions for the client and send those questions a couple of days before the meeting.
The client must know what to expect from the next meeting with us. Also, before every meeting, we ask our clients to send us questions or some other unusual stuff to discuss to prepare for the meeting. Moreover, there are always questions and topics that you can predict will probably pop up at the meeting. Prepare yourself for those questions and issues, and be ready to answer and talk about them.
At the meeting, everything depends on how good are your listening skills. Listen very carefully to what the client is talking about. When the client finishes some topic, summarize and paraphrase what you heard from the client. In the end, give feedback to the client. With this approach, you will avoid possible misunderstandings, which can lead to bad performance and project delays.
Empathy
Empathy is one of the most important stages in communication with clients. It is the way of seeing with the eyes of another, listening with the ears of another, and feeling with the heart of another.
I believe that many of you reading this now think that there is no room for empathy in business, but we in Async think that empathy is essential in business.
Do you know those situations where the seller is trying to sell you something over the telephone or at your home doorstep?
All those sellers are very friendly and have a bunch of questions for you. They behave as if they know you and understand you (= empathy). They are also probably offering some solution for your problem, which you don’t have in most cases. I believe that some of you recognize yourself in those types of situations.
That is sales, and the best weapons in the arsenal are empathy and rapport (shortly before, we were talking about rapport). Those weapons will initiate your emotions, making you feel like you have a problem and you really need that product they are offering.
Why is establishing a long term relationship with clients so important?
When we talk in Async about empathy in communication with clients, we say that it’s important to clearly understand the client’s needs, problems, and why they need us. And also, what are their long-term goals, and what do they want to achieve with this specific product.
With all this information, empathy, and rapport, we can form excellent relationships and cooperation with our clients. With all that, a quality product is beyond question. As our slogan says:
“We put all our efforts into your product. So we can grow together.”
After all, what you have read about our communication with clients, you must know that our primary goal is to give clients the best customer experience.
In the world, there are a significant number of companies providing the same products and services that we provide here in Async Labs. We believe that in few years, customer experience will be the main differentiator in quality between companies in this sector. When that time comes, we want to be the best company with the best customer experience on the market.
From day one, we are working on our communication and relationship with all our clients because we firmly believe that satisfied clients and high-level customer experience, which we are providing, can do a lot for ours and the client’s growth.
What do you think, is communication with clients important? Can improving communication with clients improve your business? Write us your opinions at hello@asynclabs.co
In the end, as Paul J. Meyer said:
“Communication – the human connection – is the key to personal and career success.”