For many years, business success has been measured by what kind of client service companies provide. If earlier, when communicating with clients, employees were accustomed to shaking hands, long negotiations in conference rooms on a business project, and friendly dinners to conclude a deal, now all this has sunk into oblivion.
Each business owner, with the advent of remote work, had to get used to the new reality. Promoting projects and strengthening business ties has become more difficult than ever, requiring enormous efforts, as increasing competition does not allow them to stick to the usual norms. Your clients may be hundreds of miles away or even in your city, but communication difficulties prevent you from continuing to work effectively as you used to.
Remote work has, without any doubt, changed the business. Now companies that have strong relationships with their customers will have to modify their ways of working and communicating.
We’ll talk about the challenges of communicating with clients while working remotely, as well as the effective ways to communicate with clients that you should use.
Table of Contents
Difficulties in communicating with clients
Although remote work has brought many benefits for employees, you could not help but notice how it negatively affected your communication with clients. Employees got more flexibility, as well as the ability not to leave their comfort zone. However, all this becomes unimportant if you have problems when interacting with clients.
Here are some of the biggest issues:
Lack of face-to-face communication
Personal communication provides everything you need so that you can find a common language with clients and establish a trusting relationship with them. A well-prepared speech, a well-crafted presentation, a clear understanding of the client’s needs, and the use of non-verbal cues – this is what helps build relationships. Lack of personal meetings deprives you of the opportunity to use all the cards that you have hidden up your sleeve.
Time differences
When communicating with foreign clients, it is important to consider time zone differences. You can start your day fresh and full of energy, and find that none of your clients are online because it is the dead of night in their country. Thus, you can easily lose customers. In such cases, you have to adapt to the clients, because you can not specify only the time that is convenient for you.
Waste of time
In a meeting, you and the client are focused on only one task. Nothing distracts you, and you pay full attention to your communication. Working remotely, you correspond with clients in instant messengers or by e-mail. The client can get distracted, forget that you are having a dialogue, and answer only after a few hours or days. This attitude certainly does not contribute to a productive dialogue.
You can also miss an important email from a client if your email box is full. You can choose an application where you will tag your important clients and receive emails from all the email boxes you have in one place.
Impatience
The lack of a response to your email encourages you to be more persistent. You start sending messages reminding you or asking for a response. This is your job as you must do everything not to lose a client. While clients may think that you are too pushy. Nobody likes when companies are pushy and thus you can lose a customer.
Effective ways to communicate with clients
After reviewing the difficulties in communicating with customers, you will realize that this is not how you want to manage the business. You cannot change the new reality, but you can adapt to it. Remote communication with clients does not mean that you do not have a chance to communicate effectively with them. We will share tips on how you can build relationships with clients.
Give video conferencing top priority
Even if you don’t have the opportunity to meet with clients in person, video conferences are still better than emails. Even weekly ten-minute video calls are much better than texting. You will notice how your relationship will begin to improve, even when hundreds of miles apart.
To make a video call, you need to agree with your clients on what software or application you will use. Give preference to an application that has good reviews and is stable.
Arrange video calls in advance
Considering that you may be in different time zones, you should agree on the time of the video call in advance. You may need to work a few extra hours to talk to the client at a time that is convenient for them. When scheduling appointments, be sure to plan your schedule so you don’t forget important things. Using scheduling apps, you will be notified in advance of what you need to do. Thus, you will never lose your face by not showing up for a video meeting.
Come prepared
You don’t want to waste your clients’ time with idle chatter. That is why, before each of your video calls, you should plan what you want to talk about and what you want to tell your client. Prepare your presentations in advance, as well as speeches that will be as much as possible on business.
Try to demonstrate the product in such a way that the client does not have additional questions that you did not cover in your presentation. If you offer software or an application, then you can demonstrate your product in action. To do this, using a screen recorder, record a video about how your software works and what features it has.
Motivate customers for feedback
Getting feedback about your product or service is your top priority. So, you will understand what are your strengths and weaknesses in your presentation. That is why you should strive to ensure that your communication with clients is open. Motivate your clients to ask you questions about anything, and ask them open-ended questions to get to know their needs. Thus, your dialogue will be eloquent and productive.
Conclusion
Remote work can be a stumbling block to effective client communication. Given all the difficulties in communicating with clients remotely, you should adapt to new realities as much as possible so as not to waste precious time. The above methods will help you simplify the process of communicating with your clients so that every communication is productive.
