How to Improve Communication With a Client?

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 have felt that way, and that’s normal because a lot of 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 at what you do.

Client communication can often be challenging, especially in our field of 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 pretty much 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 a client’s application requirements, and this is where it gets 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.

How Do We Deal With Client Communication?

At Async, we’re continuously working on our verbal and non-verbal communication skills because we think that it’s crucial to have high-level communication with our current and new clients if we want to grow as a company.

Here we are going to describe our verbal and non-verbal communication with clients through 4 main stages which include 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.

Revive all your qualities and flaws, do good work based on your qualities, and communicate all those qualities with confidence (don’t brag too much). Moreover, find out how you’re going to change those flaws in your qualities. After you find it out, start fixing those flaws and just enjoy the process.

Constant progress and self-improvements are going to grow your self-confidence on a personal and company level, in professional and cooperation sense, which all 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 he 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, to be able to adjust and “sync” with most types of personalities. When you connect, understand, and sync 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

At Async, when we talk about 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, the quality of our work 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.

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 are going to avoid possible misunderstandings, which can lead to bad performance and project delay.

Empathy

Empathy is one of the most important stages in communication with clients. Empathy is 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 who are 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 to your problem, which in most cases you don’t have. 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 which will make you feel like you have a problem and you really need that product which they are offering.

Communication and Long Term Relationships With All Our Clients

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 the client needs us. And also, what are their longterm goals and what they want to achieve with this specific product.

With all this information, with 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.”

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?

What do you think, is communication with clients important? Can improvement in communication with clients improve your business? Write us your opinions at hello@asynclabs.co