Perhaps the biggest drag I find on my productivity is clients that love to send emails, expecting fast but detailed answers, which they invariably follow up with more questions. I do have one client who always calls, though invariably outside normal opening hours.
All of this is important because we need to establish trust and a degree of availability, but at the same time it can really eat into our productivity, not to mention added stress if we are constantly being disturbed, so I am spending a little time thinking this through before launching a new site for myself.
For those working with web clients I am curious to know what are your preferred channels of communication with clients and have you found ways to keep them happy without having it take over your day?
A while back when I was super busy I found myself night after night still replying to client emails well after midnight. Some noticed I was always working late and commented, but never once seemed to ask themselves why I was still working so late…
So what do you prefer? email, Zoom, WhatsApp, mobile phone or something else?
I always like to say hi on the phone first with a new client, and then its email 100% for work related things…and a call if its warranted!
As you know I run 2 businesses and people call me up all kinds of hrs which would start to take its toll on me, but last few years I have worked hard on getting family values and my life back on track after some hard times and I value family time more than ever now and have no regret telling people i’m busy with family!
Now when people call, I do message them back saying to drop it on email or call tomorrow from 9am, but email is preferred.
I actually find it comes over more professional saying office is closed from 5.30pm and back open from 9am tomorrow - when I do get in at 9am I do make a huge effort to clear my emails in 1 straight hr or as many as possible and do any calls which they have requested, but I still get them to email info over so I have full traceability.
For me: Email, Email, Email and Email. This way I can control when, how and what I answer. On my phone, I have switched off all notifications as it’s a never-ending stream of information/disruption.
For managing clients (not as a web designer but for my consultancy business and restaurants) I invested in Mailbutler.
It’s an Apple Mail plugin and helps me manage tasks, requests etc. I’m using the professional+ package which suits my needs for now. To manage all other tasks which come with multiple businesses I switched recently to Clickup which is awesome!
A couple times I tried using Trello or Slack and it just never flew, because clients found it too alien. WhatsApp chat can be useful for very short exchanges though. They do sometimes leave messages at silly hours and those can generally be ignored.
I agree about the traceability with e-mail and being able to reference what was written. That is the one big plus point, however there are times when I have finished a job and felt it was just absurd how many hours were lost on emails. When you take a car to the garage, you don’t expect the mechanic to answer 50 emails on how the car will be serviced.
Obviously email is fine when it is two lines, but on more complex questions that might take an hour to answer I am thinking it would be better to discuss on the phone for ten minutes at an agreed hour, then follow up with a very brief email of bullet points.
Two ideas I am opposed to are having one of those online chat pop-ups on the website, since I bet it would invite a lot of time wasting questions and also receiving random calls on Zoom or Skype etc.
At the moment I can be contacted through the site by email, landline and mobile. Given that I plan to have geographic landing pages covering different areas I may just drop the landline, though again some like to see that because it gives them a sense that the business is legitimate.
One tip I picked up from a podcast is that when called by potential clients asking lots of questions make sure initial calls are limited to 15 minutes, then tell them you unfortunately have a deadline to meet, but direct them to a consultancy page and invite them to book a call.
At that point they will see a fee for further discussions and realise A) You are busy and B) Your time has value. If they genuinely want to work with you they’ll either book a call to ask further questions or simply reach out to ask for a quote.
A few months back I had to deal with the irony of some hospitality consultants for hotels expecting me to give up an hour over Zoom to provide them with free consultancy for a website that I already worked out they were planning to build themselves. I had already spoken to one, then he wanted a call back so I could explain it to his colleagues. I had to say no.
It was somebody I know who lives just around the corner. He was part of an international network of hugely experienced, yet apparently unemployable consultants wanting to attract the worlds biggest hotel clients on a budget of $5. A month or two later some of them split off and formed a separate group, which I also keep at arms length.
I work for hire - but management has very diverse interests - and a lot of communication accordingly.
The worst option I’ve had is email.
Because I have about 10 or 30 different mailboxes that everything falls in and out of.
If you ask someone something by mail - then you have to tediously trace - whether you got a reply and whether it was what you need.
Our company is engaged in other things registration of companies and sales of equipment and God knows what else.
In the end, of course, all communication with counterparties all the same by mail.
In order to somehow cope with it I use Spark and Apple Mail.
Recently I was also assigned to manage the development of KYC AML product for brokers.
All communication with my colleagues management and team - is done via Telegram.
You can create a folder there - which I call projects. When I need to hold a meeting, I just create a voice chat - there is a function there.
And as a result, I have each project has its own group - nothing gets lost and everything is always at your fingertips.
When I have clients I also create a group for them.
Telegram has proven to be a universal tool.
So as not to distract my attention I have bought another number and created a Telegram account from it - and the program allows me to switch between accounts.
The total work issues separately - and personal issues separately.
Telegram appears to be popular in East Europe, much like Viber. Here in the UK everybody seems to use WhatsApp and it would be difficult trying to push clients on to something else for basic messaging.
I am not a big fan of WhatsApp, however I can almost guarantee my clients will have it and some have asked me to include a WhatsApp link on their websites.
I use a ticketing system which I feel helps to focus client issues to one issue per ticket. The problem with email is that it allows clients to wander off in all directions with a raft of issues they may be experiencing. If they have to create a ticket which limits their support choices, they tend to focus more on the specific issue rather than bring up a whole host of sometimes unrelated things. I also like the inbuilt ticket management facility where all support tickets are neatly filed in one place instead of having to check through stacks of emails from several clients. You can also create boilerplate responses for many frequently occurring issues which saves a lot of time. At 19 - 27 Euros (depending on the type of licence you want) its a great value time saver and helps to keep support well organised.
Nice, I was just re-checking out their site. I am keen to use some of the scripts, But the jquery thing is the issue for me at the moment. Any conflicts with Bootstrap 5?
That might actually be a very good idea to add a ticket system if it helps to keep clients more focussed, since that is perhaps the single biggest problem with email.
We are all used to dealing with ticket systems when contacting a web host for example, but it does sometimes give an initial impression of being impersonal and if they don’t reply in ten minutes it is easy to imagine they are not efficient. Do you find clients like using the ticket system?
Up to now, it has just been me working from home and providing a personal service to local clients. They seem to like email, however I want to give an impression of being larger and more organised, so a ticket system would certainly help there. Like @PeteSharp I was also curious to know about any conflicts with BS5, since you wouldn’t want this to go wrong at some unforeseen point with ongoing support issues.
I often see PHP Jabbers mentioned for scripts but yet to use them and sometimes found their pricing unclear in the past. It actually looks clearer now looking at this page.
I have used PHP Jabbers a lot and even got a script modified to be able to accept local bank payments here in Mauritius. However, and correct me if wrong, their scripts start to feel outdated. For a ticket system I would go for an open-source alternative like Osticket: https://osticket.com
Or, if you want all the bells and whistles available, Uvdesk:
