Feedback 101: How to Get the Most Out of Client Interactions

Table of contents

• Best practices when interacting with clients
  • The Art Of Listening
  • Empathize
  • Personalize
  • Record Minutes Of The Interaction
  • Maintain Timelines
  • Gather Meaningful information From Clients
  • Appreciate And Reward Them
  • Log Touch Points
  • Approach
  • Friendly Language
  • Observe Complaints
  • First-contact Resolutions
  • Right Closure
• Conclusion
• FAQs

Client interactions play a vital role in understanding the requirements and issues faced by them. This would eventually help cater to their needs and provide them with an exceptional experience throughout your services. The better the experience, the more loyalty and retention of clients.

The sole goal of every company is to keep their clients happy and engaged. And to do this it is important to know what is customer interaction and how to go about it. Clients form the foundation of any business and contribute to the success of the company. Happy and satisfied clients increase the company’s brand reputation in the market and hence, provide a boost to the sales curve.

The company could have exceptional products or services to offer, but it would all go in vain unless it understands the client’s requirements. The products or services should solve the clients’ pain points and address their needs. So, the question is, how would we know about the requirements of the clients?

The answer is simple, through client interactions. 

Client interactions play a vital role in understanding the requirements and issues faced by them. This would eventually help cater to their needs and provide them with an exceptional experience throughout your services. The better the experience, the more loyalty and retention of clients.

With the above discussion, it is clear that client interactions are crucial, but how can we make our client interactions count?

Let us see in detail how we can get the most out of client interactions.

Best practices when interacting with clients

The Art of Listening

“If you make listening and observation your occupation, you will gain much more than you can by talk.” — Robert Baden-Powell

Listening completely to your clients is usually half the work done. Carefully listen to every bit of information provided by the clients during interactions. During the initial interactions, try to gather the information as much as possible by listening to them. This will also give them a feeling that they are valued and respected. Give all your attention and focus on the concerns raised by them. It will help us understand what kind of clients we are dealing with and map our strategies based on the observations. Be in the moment and mindful while interacting with clients.

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Empathize

Empathy is being aware of another person’s feelings or situation. We may have exceptional products, unmatched services, advanced tools, or processes, but empathy is unparalleled. Showing your human side in understanding their issues will make your personality shine more and personalize with your clients. Think from the client’s perspective and segment the requirements accordingly. Give them the confidence that they have collaborated with the right company for their needs.

There can be moments during the interactions that the clients may have a harsh tone or be upset about something. Try to support them by understanding the situation and filling in the gaps by providing correct information. Empathy will create positive word-of-mouth for your company in the market.

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Personalize

Don’t be a problem-solver for them. Create a personalized bond with the clients. Personalization will help in gaining the loyalty of the clients. Engage with the clients personally and try to get the most of it by asking any number of questions related to business so that the alignment of their project can be structured in the correct direction to avoid any disappointment later. Building personalized bonds strengthens trust and helps in the retention of the clients.

Here are a few points to be considered on how to create a personalized bond with clients?

• Do not follow a copy-paste approach for all clients. Personalize your services by using their names or references over the mails or other platforms.
• Answer their queries honestly and be specific while responding to them.
• Try to know the client’s touchpoints and present an in-depth analysis. 

Successful personalization is the key to a good customer experience.

Record Minutes of the Interactions

Document all the information received during the interactions. Also, record the sessions with the clients so that you can always have a backup to rely on whenever there is a miss. Make notes every time you have an interaction with the client. This will help keep track of things and prepare the final document easily. Highlight the important points during the interaction so that they will not be missed.

Document all the day-to-day information gathered from the clients. It will help in catering to their needs correctly. You can also use these notes when in doubt to cross-check with them for more clarity.

Maintain Timelines

Interactions can be very tiring and time-consuming, enabling proper timelines for each interaction and task at every stage during the project. This will help in planning the activities correctly for achieving optimized results. Unnecessary delays or discussions will frustrate the client and can have negative results for the company. Prioritize the timelines based on the urgency of the requirements from the client side. Delay in delivering the required output promptly can disappoint the clients.

Prepare a calendar prior and share it with the clients to avoid any clashes over the schedule and address their requirements in time.

Gather Meaningful Information From Clients

Interactions sometimes can lead to lots of unnecessary information. Focus on what kind of information would help you in setting the tone and relationship with the client. The more business-specific information you have, the easier it is to strategize their plans. 

Try to gather the information as much as possible. Ask them questions and figure out their pain points and what kind of solutions they are looking for. When in doubt, try to paraphrase your queries to make them understandable. Also, try to find out what kind of preferences the clients have on a personal basis. For example, the client may be a sports enthusiast. Now, try to ease the interactions based on their personal preferences.

It is very important to communicate on the clients’ terms. Some clients may prefer communicating through emails, while others might prefer to get on a call directly. 

You can also use various tools or forms like google forms to capture important data from them. 

Appreciate and Reward Them

Client interactions can be tiring and frustrating. Try to motivate your clients by appreciating and rewarding them for their support and cooperation. Who would not like to receive sweet gestures expressing thanks and appreciation? You can send them personalized thank-you notes along with small surprises. This personal touch will enhance the relationship.

You can welcome them onboard by creating personalized gift boxes along with client-specific cards. This will surely work in favor of the company and clients will also appreciate your efforts.

Log Touch Points

A good part of understanding what is customer interaction involves knowing all the touchpoints that impact them. Now, if you have already been into the customer interaction front, it would be easy to understand what comprises the pain points for every customer.

However, it is not possible to keep these touchpoints at the forefront while interacting with a repeat customer. This brings into the picture the necessity to keep a log of these pain points that are readily accessible as and when needed. Tools like personalized customer database systems can be of much-needed help here. For instance, using a CRM can make it a lot easier to fetch these pain points instantly to address customer requirements most appropriately.

Approach

When looking forward to how to get client feedback, keeping in mind the right approach can also prove to be crucial in the long run. Practices like going after the customer to collect the right feedback are quite common today. But, the inefficacy of these approaches cannot be ignored. All they do is push away the customer from giving you feedback, further eliminating the core factors contributing to what is customer interaction and why is it important to a business.

It is thus ideal to try not to be pushy. Instead, serve the right value to bring about genuine customer interest to your business and feedback being collected. Here’s a thought! Why not delight your customer instead of being pushy!

Friendly Language

Language plays a key role in helping you get the right feedback from your customers while you interact with them. The easy answer on how to get feedback from customers is to treat them right with your language. Keep it positive instead of focusing on the negative. It allows seeding the right idea concisely in our customer’s minds rather than giving them a detour.

For instance, if a customer has called up seeking product replacement, you might want to give a pass to statements like, “The product is not available right away”. Instead, it would be a good idea to tell them when exactly would it be available with the right date and/or time.

Observe Complaints

Receiving complaints from a customer might have layers to it that would need uncovering, which is often surely not perceivable at the first go. With no doubt, it can be tough to handle an enraged or harsh complaint.

Keeping the right approach to complaint resolution can be the key to completing what is successful customer interaction. From the onset, it would thus be wise to proceed with the following steps.

• Try controlling the situation instead of enraging it further.
• Start by acknowledging the issue or problem with a genuine humane touch.
• Try refocusing your conversation towards the solution instead of simply agreeing to the issue.
• Strike the right tone of conversation and ensure to provide a resolution so that the customer leaves with joy.

First-contact Resolutions

Providing the customer with the first resolution available at a breakneck speed might not be the ideal way to go forward when it comes to keeping the interaction right. It may not be the best taste a customer is looking for. Besides, you might be missing the entire point of the right customer service.

You can only elevate the importance of customer interaction by ensuring to provide the resolution in the first instance of contact. Remember, nothing makes a customer happier than being served with a helpful suggestion on the first go.

Conclusion

Client interactions play a very vital role in getting full information on a project. Getting the most out of your client interactions can lay the foundation for the perfect plan for the commencement of the services. It will also help in understanding the needs of the clients and improve your products and services.

FAQs