I have a quick confession – I hate working with building contractors because they don’t employ proactive communication. In my experience of getting some flood damage fixed, I’ve dealt with l contractors missing deadlines, frequent lateness, little to no proactive client communication on the progress, etc.
I’ve had to become my own project manager to ensure I knew all the steps needed to complete the job then consistently checking in to make sure there were no surprises.
A simple checklist of the tasks and a daily update would go a long way to ensuring I had peace of mind.
Client communication matters to us as a white label agency because everything we share with our partners will be then shared with their clients. Replying quickly to an email isn’t enough because it’s often a sign our client isn’t clear about the process.
Tips for Proactive Communication With Clients
- Hold a weekly client check-in where all active and upcoming tasks are reviewed along with any identified risks. Share a status doc in case your client needs to distribute the project’s status to a wider audience.
- Ensure all tasks have been entered into client accessible project tracker and provide training so your client is incentivized to track tasks for themselves.
- Offer select partner agencies access to your Slack instance for real-time communication.
- If a matter is urgent don’t hesitate to request an ad hoc meeting and send an agenda so they’ll know what to expect.
The benefits to implementing some or all of these solutions are paradoxically less communication since your client is conditioned to receiving communication on your terms.
Proactive communication creates trust and trust extends into goodwill.
Remember no news is not good news, it’s just no news.
