EP #61 | How to Serve Your Clients Well Without Being On 24/7

Welcome to the Designers Oasis podcast. I'm your host, Kate Bendewald. If you're tired of one-size-fits-all all advice to running your interior design business, you're in the right place. Join me each week as we dive into topics to help you run a thriving interior design business. Without the hustle. We'll talk about the business of design, but also mindset and mental health because I know when you thrive, so will your life and business. It wasn't that long ago that I stepped away from my corporate interior design job to build my own design business so that I could realize my own creative dreams, have more time with the people I love, and serve my clients at the highest level, while making more money than I ever could have working for someone else. It wasn't always easy, and I made my share of mistakes along the way. Fast forward to today. And I've learned a thing or two. Since then I've built multiple six-figure interior design businesses on authentic word-of-mouth referrals with many repeat clients. And I want to share it all with you the ambitious, inspired, and I get it occasionally overwhelmed interior designer who shares this dream of transforming lives through the art of interior design, You can do this. Thank you for letting me spend part of this day with you. Let's get to it.

Well, hello there, my friends, welcome back. So good to be hanging out with you today, we are going to be talking today about how to serve your clients without being available 24/7 without being on all the time. Listen, I get really passionate about this, you know, they say oh, there's no real such thing as work-life balance when you're an entrepreneur. And I would say that's true to a degree because sometimes we can always turn off what's in our head. But when it comes to your client communications and how they have access to you and how available you are, you have a lot of control over what kind of expectations you set up so that you can feel like you're in balance so that you're not always on all the time, and that you don't feel the need to respond.

But we need to talk about this because I know for a lot of you this doesn't come naturally. I know for me, especially in the in the real early days that as a new designer, I was very eager to please my clients to the nth degree with for whatever it took, you know, and I felt like I was doing the right thing. And it it took me a little while to realize that I could take up some space here. And that I could hold really healthy boundaries with my clients. And that would only prove to enhance my relationship with my clients. Not the opposite. It didn't diminish my relationship with my clients in any way. It really helped enhance my relationship with my clients, because they valued me more they valued my time. They viewed me as a professional. And so it just it quickly morphed into this strong feeling that this was an important aspect of my business was to figure out how can I continue to develop systems in my business that allowed my clients to have access and communication to me, so that they felt nurtured that they felt seen and cared for, even if I'm juggling five 610 projects at a time and do it without being on all the time.

Alright, so we're gonna get into it. I'm really excited. Just a quick reminder that on November 16, we have the annual master planning workshop. You'll hear more about it a little bit later in in today's episode, but I really want to see you there. It's a powerful, powerful workshop. This is the fourth year in a row that we've done it. You can learn more by going to designers oasis.com forward slash plan to learn more. This is a really great way to help you get kick off the new year 2020 For clarity and with intention. So look forward to seeing you there. Okay, so let's think about this for a second, imagine this, perhaps something like this has happened to you, perhaps you're standing in line at the grocery store, and you're listening to your tunes, and you're veg out after a long day of work, and all of a sudden, you get a text message. And I'm gonna, for those of you watching on YouTube, use air quotes here, urgent text message from a client, the word urgent is in air quotes, something's wrong, they have a question, something arrived, you know, sad, who knows, it could be a million things. But there's a sense in a tone of urgency to it. All of a sudden, you've got this beautiful, like daydreaming moment where you can finally just kind of chill out for the day. And all of a sudden, you were ripped from your daydreams and zapped right into this feeling of panic or anxiety or urgency, and yet you're at the grocery stand you there's nothing you can do about it right now.

So I know this has happened to me, or perhaps, maybe you're working on a project and you are in a creative flow, you're in the zone, you have got your music going, your candle lit, and you are really things are coming together, things are gelling, and you're feeling good. And you go to your email to look for something to look for a piece of information to reference something. And all of a sudden, in your inbox, you see, again, in air quotes, an urgent email from a client who has a question or a problem or situation and they need your help, doesn't matter what it is. But all of a sudden, you are yanked by your neck out of this flow out of this creative zone that you're in. And all of a sudden switching into this, you know, analytical left side of your brain trying to problem solve, strategize, whatever the case may be, you've lost that flow. You've been you've been robbed of that moment of putting something really magical and beautiful together. Now is this your clients fault? No. But today, we're going to talk about strategies for not only allowing clients to know how to get a hold of you when to get a hold of you what when to expect responses, and that sort of thing. As well as ways for you to talk about these things with your client and set those expectations early on in a project so that when those emails come come in, because we're not, we know they're not going to be or text messages, we know that there, they can't be eliminated 100%. But at least you can manage and control a little bit of it. For me personally, I don't do text messaging with my clients until very, very, very, very late later into the relationship. More on that in a minute. But my point is, we're going to talk about some strategies so that when those text messages or emails come in, that you can say to yourself, Wait a second. I'm not even going to open this right now. Because I'm in a flow. And I want to honor this creative moment that's happening. And this other client who has supposed to be having my undivided attention and my dedicated attention right now, and know that it doesn't matter what's on the inside of this email, it doesn't matter, whatever it is, because in interior design, there's almost never an emergency. Now, very occasionally, there might be a special delivery that you're having to tie in those kinds of things. If that's the case, then you should already be prepared for that in that moment, right. Those kinds of things typically don't happen on a on a unplanned basis. So So I want to I want to give you some tools to kind of say to yourself, Wait a second. I don't have to respond to this right now. This can wait, this can wait, right?

Molly crouch who has been a guest expert, or excuse me, a guest on this podcast. She is an expert, by the way. She said to me one time, and I'll link back to her episode, you're the only one who can change your relationship with time. You're the only one that can change your relationship with time. And I thought that was really beautiful because I was expressing to her that I have a constant feeling that there's never enough time that things are never done. A lot of times so many things feel urgent at once. And what she helped me to understand was, that's not the things the people, the events, whatever that's causing me to feel that way. It's my perception of how they interact with my life and how I'm feeling. So I love that I wanted to bring that back up. You're the only one that can change your relationship with time because I think if we kind of tuck that little thought away into the back of our minds as we're talking today, it can really help things feel really doable.

Okay, so love to talk with you first about setting expectations with your clients. Setting expectations with your clients is the number one most important way to hold boundaries healthy boundaries around communication tons. And there's a couple of ways that you can do this. One of my favorite and simplest ways to do this is there is a single page inside our client welcome package, I will link to our template in the show notes. But there's a single page dedicated to communications and how we communicate. And it includes super helpful information that a client can really hang on to, and save for the future. But, you know, it can include things like, you know, standard holidays, where you're closed, your working hours, how to connect, how to contact you these kinds of things. And so you can, by putting it in a substantial document like this, such as your client welcome package, it just says already before, and I want to point out that the client welcome package is delivered to a client in my workflow, the workflow that I suggest, at the end of a consultation, if you're if you kick off a full service project with a consultation, typically, at the end of that consultation, if I feel like this is a client that I want to continue to work with, and we're going to do a proposal and move things along, that's when they would get that welcome package, your workflow flow may look a little different. But whatever the case may be it they're getting that information prior to even signing a contract with me, okay, so they see this information upfront. And they just will have to know like, if you want to work with me this, this is how it's going to be. Got it.

And so that gives you a really easy way to communicate that it is also reiterated in the contract to so they would see it again, there. So it's important to set those expectations about how to connect with you, I want you to think about how do you want your clients to communicate with you is texting, okay? I know for a lot of designers, they're perfectly fine texting with their clients. And if that's you, then great, let that be something that you know, a benefit of being perhaps a full service client, but only a full service client would get, if that works for you. But if you're like me, and you're like, Man, I really want to text with my client. I want to keep everything streamlined and email, then it's really important that you that you state that in your communications guidelines. If if you do allow texting, I would suggest that you put some parameters around it that you know, texting is fine between the hours of you No, nine to five, Monday through Friday, please do not text me after five or on the weekends. That could be a perimeter that you set if you if you do allow texting. Another scenario. Another option that I've done in the past and worked really beautifully is I had a dedicated Google phone number that clients had access to. And with an A Google phone number, at least at the time that I was using, it was free, but you can set that up to get phone calls and text messages from that. And so I know I'm an Apple iPhone user. And with that you can set up different focus modes. And one of the things that you could choose to do would be to, you can you can tell it, which apps are allowed to alert you and during what times. And so I have a working focus mode set. And in that focus mode setting, I can set it up so that yes, my Google phone can call me or text me during working hours, and then it would automatically turn off. So you can totally set up a schedule. If you really want to nerd out on all of this. I've got a couple of focus modes, I've got one for what I'm podcasting which says Do Not Disturb and has no ringing or dinging is happening. I've got one when I'm, you know, typical days at work so that my kids school can contact me but really, and my husband really nobody else in my assistants can contact me. So you can set this up a number of ways, and set the schedule and that can really help to eliminate those distractions. I'm telling you what eliminating distractions is one of the most impactful ways that you can thrive in your in your in your business because it can help you get more done in less time.

It can help you have more quality work because you're you're not switching gears and switching tasks so often because that's such a it robs you of so much time. So the determined texting phone calls what's what what do your clients have available to you? I tell my clients, you can pick up the phone and call me anytime during business hours. I will always pick up if I'm available. If not, I'll get back to you shortly. So they know they can always pick up the phone and call me. And that's usually for like quick stuff. And to be frank it very rarely happens but from occasion on occasion it does and I welcome it because it's usually quick call making, you know, get the ball rolling on something else, whatever the case may be. But if a client needs to maybe hop on the phone with you for something that's going to take more than five minutes, I recommend you always give your clients access to a call scheduler with you Most of your typical booking software's have a feature like this, but a way for them to at any point, they can schedule a, say 1520 30 minute call with you, and give them access to that all the time. That way they feel like, if we really do need to sit down and hash something out, they know that they have access to you that way. Another thing I want you to think about, if you have any kind of an assistant that's working for you, is there are there certain kinds of emails, that should go to them first.

Of course, this depends on the capacity of your employee or your staff members. But even something as simple you know, as as a virtual assistant, if your client needs to book a call with you, or they have a simple question, they, they could, in theory, filter all of those questions through your assistant so that you're not getting as inundated with phone calls and text messages and that sort of thing. But if you have a junior designer, a senior designer, a project manager, those could be the people who are fielding any sort of questions related to the project itself that are more nuanced and specific to the project. So this goes back to leveraging your team to help you run your business be more efficient. We've got some episodes on that. So we'll be sure to link to that if if that's something that you're thinking about. But you can train these people to know how to respond, of course, you want to make sure that they are also creating those healthy boundaries and that they are not on 24/7. So they should also know that if they see an email come in late at night, that there there are no way obligated to respond to that until until the following day. All right. So next, I want you to think about how long you are comfortable allowing an email to go or a phone call to go unresponded to for me, it's 24 hours except on the weekends. So what that means is my clients know that if they email me, or they leave me a voicemail to give me 24 hours to get back to them. And I abide by that I get back to them.

Here's the deal. There have been many times where I knew like maybe I was traveling, or maybe I was hunkered down in a deadline, you know, whatever the case may be, I knew that I wouldn't be able to get them a fully answer within 24 hours, one strategy that you can do is you can send a quick reply and just say, Hey, Miss Smith, I just wanted to let you know that I saw your email. And it's going to need a little bit of my time to respond thoughtfully to all of your questions. So if you could just give me till Friday to get back to you on that, while I wrap up a deadline that I'm in the middle of, you know, whatever the case may be or finished my travels or you know, those kinds of things. But let them know that you've you've seen it. Another scenario that I like to use is an auto responder, it's more of a generic reply. So an auto responder can be something that you have on your email that includes specific information for your clients, you have to be mindful about it because of course, anybody that emails you is going to get this auto responder. So that can sometimes work and sometimes not just depending on what all you have going on. But an auto responder, it could include information like, you know, Hey, just wanted to let you know we got your email at safely tucked away in our inbox, we'll get back to you within 24 hours. In the meantime, here are some answers to some commonly asked questions. And maybe you put in there a link to the client portal, maybe they're struggling to log in and looking for something like that. Maybe you put in the booking link to your your schedule, or if they need to book a call with you, they have access to that. So think about what kind of information would be important for a client to receive but would also be okay, if other people received it. You might also consider putting in there things like if you have an urgent question, please reach out to so and so. And he put the email address of your project manager so it just kind of depends on what what you have set up in your business. But those are the kinds of things that in theory, could help a client feel supported, maybe get some quick answers to something that they need while you are able to wrap up whatever you're doing and come back to that response a little bit later.

One other thing that was really successful for us with clients, a lot of times your project management systems. So this might be house Pro, my DOMA studio designer, design files, those kinds of software. A lot of times, there's a place for once you give your clients access for your clients to comment and ask questions. And so right after our big design presentation, we give our clients access to that portal. That's that's really the first time that we give them access to our, our internal portal. And we have a little quick loom video that shows them, hey, we know that we shared a lot of information with you today. And you're going to need maybe a little bit of time to think about some of the specific things that we asked you. And so what this allows our clients to do, we'll try to get as much buy in as possible in the design, presentation and sign off on whatever we can. But always inevitably, there's going to be a handful of things that it's like, I managed to more questions or I need to think about that one a little bit more. And so this portal allows clients to comment and question on specifications on an on a specific item. And we love that because it keeps all of that information organized into one central location. So we're not having to dig through emails, certainly dig through text messaging, and that's a huge part of why I don't text is because not only do I not want to feel like I have to respond to something right away. But I don't want information to start going to text message that text messages that later I'm gonna have to think to myself, Oh, Lord, where was this information? Was it in the email? Was it in text? Or was it in the project management system.

So we just try to avoid the text messaging altogether, with the exception of sometimes logistics, okay, so think about relying on your project management system, whatever you might use to give your clients a specific place to provide feedback, questions and comments on specifications. And this is heavily this is going to heavily eliminate a bunch of back and forth emails immediately following a design presentation. But make sure that you give your clients instructions on that and show them how to do it, make it make it as simple as possible. Alright, so moving on. I want to think about after the design presentation. Well, let me back up. This doesn't just happen after the design presentation, but they become more dense at this point is end of week emails. So we send into week emails to every one of our clients with just quick updates on what's going on. What's what's coming up next. What's what's arrived, what, you know, what meetings we have coming up who we talked to that week, you get the picture. So indeed, we emails happen during the design presentation, but there's not a whole lot of content to them, but we might on occasion have a question. These are the weak emails are super important because the clients come to rely on them. And what that does is if you start to train your clients to expect them at the end of the week, then you are eliminating those, you know, weekend emails from clients with questions. Because what happens our clients during the week are busy working, they're focused on whatever it is they do during the day at And it's on the weekends when they get to think about, you know, how their project is progressing. And so that's when these questions sneak up and you want to get ahead of that.

Okay, you want to preempt that. So what we do is we send an end of week email that gives those big updates. And of course, if you have any other questions, please, please let us know. And then they have the weekend to respond, which allows us to hit the ground running on Monday, after the design presentation, those end of Week, emails do start to get a little bit more dense, we try to keep our clients apprised of, you know, what's arrived, we make sure they have access to the client portal, so they can see those updates, we communicate damages when necessary. A lot of times, small damages can be easily fixed. And it's just not a big deal. We don't want to try to burden them with I don't want we don't want them to think the wheels are falling off where we tried to make it look as effortless as possible. So make sure that you are incorporating an end of week email into your client process. It'll help your clients to feel nurtured and supported. Okay, and they're gonna come to expect those into weak emails, and no, no to look for them. So that's a that's a, that's a real game changer if you're not already doing that. One, one last quick tip on that, before we move on to our last point, create a template for yourself for this, what are what is the kind of information that you want to have in there, this is a very easy thing for you to train an assistant to do for you. We keep a running list of Oh yeah, these are things that we need to include in the end of week email, you know, if I were if something just pops into my mind, I have a quick note, I can drop that into and then at the end of the week, they send that out. If you are off on Fridays, you can always schedule that email to go out in advance. And you can do that. Usually with with Google and lots of other email, email service providers.

A lot of times project management systems have the ability to do that as well. So with Google, we use boomerang and so Boomerang is how we schedule emails to be sent at a later time. Okay, the last thing that I want to talk about is communicating early with your clients, when you are planning to have any time off for any length of time, you know, I typically say more than two days where I know I'm not going to be available, I'm not going to be checking email, maybe this is because I'm on a photoshoot or an install, or I'm traveling or I'm just taking the day off or whatever. If I'm going to be gone for more than two days, without access to email and communications, then I want to let our client you want to let your clients know in advance, and how long in advance is relative to how long you'll be away. So if you're going to be going on maternity leave, and let's just say you're taking three or more months off, you obviously want to be communicating that much, much, much, much sooner and have a communication plan and game plan for while you're away. Somebody to help manage and over oversee your inbox during your absence. But if you're going to be gone just for a week, you want to give your clients at least a month's notice and just let them know how long you're going to be away. What are the dates is there anybody that's going to be monitoring your email, and if so, letting them know who they can contact in your absence, should you have someone, but you really want to be able to take whatever time off you need without hesitation. So that you can can really rejuvenate. You know these, this is a really important aspect of being an entrepreneur is having time to shut down that's, that's when creativity can really start to read, you know, you can feel creative, you can feel inspired, you can show up fully present for your clients and for the work that you're doing. And so I want to encourage you to really embrace time off in a really healthy way and creating healthy boundaries around it. Without the guilt without feeling like you need to check in and part of this just comes with, you need to give yourself permission to do this. Don't be afraid to take up space. Don't be afraid to set those boundaries. And if a client test those boundaries, if they text you even though you've said you don't text if they're emailing you, even when you're off, I want you to really hold that line in affirm, but kind way, you know, what I typically say is, you know, the first text message, first of all, don't respond right away, give it 48 hours. And then after that, I would say hey, just a quick reminder that we communicate through email. Text messaging is reserved for friends and family. So go ahead and send me your questions to this email. And that would be an appropriate response for the first one. If they were to do it again, simply don't respond. If you if you respond, then you're feeding into that practice and so that that's not going to work so simply don't respond. And hopefully after that you're not dealing with these issues anymore. If you are go back and listen to my podcast episode on red flags, and we talk a little bit more about there. But I really hope that you can feel not only empowered to take up this space in your business and to hold these healthy, healthy boundaries, but know that it's just going to improve your relationship with your clients, because they're going to respect you as as a professional as the professional that you are. But it's important that you take the the really critical steps of putting into play these, these communications with your clients.

So if you don't have a welcome package, go get mine and I will show you exactly how and what to communicate to your clients. This information is also in our in our contract, which you can also find on our website, but make sure that you're communicating early with them about the best way to get a hold of you. Go set up that scheduling link so that your clients have access to a 20 minute schedule or a 30 minute schedule or whatever you whatever you decide, or maybe you have a 15 and a 30 Minute.

Put this information in your signature line, create your auto responder, create the zip loom video that shows your client how to use their project management their their client portal to to provide questions and comments there, we'll make a list of what are the things that you can do to start to move away from from auto responding yourself to clients, emails, questions and text messages, who create that Google phone number, whatever the case may be. But I hope that some of these strategies have helped you not only feel inspired to take control of your schedule, and take control of the communications with your clients. But that you've got some concrete ideas, some specific tools that you can use to help you get started with implementing these strategies right now. All right, my friend. That's all I have for today. Thanks for hanging out. I'll see you next time. Bye for now.

Hey, friend, thank you so much for letting me spend a part of this day with you. I'm so passionate about helping designers like you. And I believe in a rising tide that only one of us does. Well, we all do better. So if you share this attitude of abundance with me, I want you to do just one little thing. Please share this episode with someone using might love it. And if you're feeling extra generous today, go ahead and take just 30 seconds to open your podcast app and leave us a five star rating and review. It's free for you to do and it helps me to be able to keep making more episodes and resources for you. However you choose to help please No, I appreciate you so very much. Thank you, my friend. Have a wonderful rest of your day. I'll see you soon.