More Money, Better Results, Less Stress
As you are developing new offers in your business, it’s natural to think about what your clients are going to get from your offer. What they’re going to learn. What they’re going to take-away. How you’re going to pace the program. What you’re going to charge for access to your brilliance.
You need to think about all of these things. Every coach will tell you that.
I encourage you to take it a step further:
How do you want them to feel about your relationship?
How can you ensure that every client is receiving the same standard of care, regardless of how they navigate the offer?
You need a client care plan.
Why Do You Need a Client Care Plan?
A client care plan will help you deliver amazing, consistent service across the board to all of your clients. Your focus will be on building the relationship, not the transaction. Your clients will notice.
The client care plan is an internal process that explicitly communicates the expectations of the working relationship. You can use this document to communicate with your team so everyone is on the same page
The plan explains:
- What to do in case of conflict or difficulty
- How to show your appreciation to clients
- How to understand your clients and their needs
- How you want to be treated by your clients (your work hours, your response time, your expertise, your scope, your boundaries)
- How to communicate with your clients throughout the lifecycle of their program and afterwards
Your clients will never see this behind-the-scenes process, but what they will see is how you care for them. More so than the quality of any service, THIS is what will score you referrals.
If you add a client care plan into your offer-building process, you will:
- Always know what you have to do
- Be able to outsource aspects of the plan as your team grows
- Deliver a high standard of care to all of your clients, without anyone slipping through the cracks
- Focus on serving the client and running your business, not trying to remember details like who needs to receive which email
There are three parts to creating an amazing experience for both you and your clients.
#1 Embrace the YOU
A client care journey is an extension of your personality, your methods, your experiences, and your authentic voice.
Every step of this process needs to reflect YOU, your business, your values, and your mission.
It should be designed to provide the level of support needed for your client to get results but also tell a story or share a narrative of you and your personality.
Rather than the client just receiving a service, this is an opportunity for you to really show off what it’s like to receive a service from YOU.
This sets you apart from other service providers who offer similar deliverables.
Before you start figuring out what your contract says, or what calendar invites you need to send, or what gift you’ll send a client, ask yourself these questions:
Where can you be authentically YOU in this relationship?
Examples: I want to be fun, expressive, share my love of nerdy things and pop culture, send memes or funny cartoons, and share my interests in books, movies, podcasts, and health. I want things to be surprising and delightful– things they won’t see anywhere else.
What would be fun for you?
Examples: My love language is gifts, so I like curating individual gift ideas that are super fun and related to them individually. I want to surprise and delight them by doing things randomly and without warning. I don’t want to worry about sending follow-up emails or contracts. I want the “have-tos” to be automatic so I can focus on the “get-tos.”
How can you celebrate client progress or wins?
Examples: Send a well-made and fun greeting card I find on Etsy or in small paper shops. Shout clients out on social media. Send them a confetti cannon to set off when they meet their goals. Send them champagne or cake. Record a video congratulating them.
How can you stand out from others in your industry?
Examples: I want to be the go-to person for having the easiest and most welcoming client experience. I want them to feel special and cared for and not like a transaction. I want to share as much of myself as I will be asking of them.
What is important for you to express?
Examples: My personal and professional values. How to be successful in working with me. How they can expect me to show up. Boundaries around topics I am not qualified or able to coach or consult on. Times when I am available for communication. When I take holidays or breaks. My working hours. How we’ll handle conflict or disagreements.
How do you want your clients to feel around you? What do you want your clients to think of you?
Examples: I want them to feel like this experience will be fun. I want them to feel well-cared for and prepared to work together. I want them to feel like I care and know that I will show up for them.
#2 Design the Relationship
Once you understand who you are and how you want to show up, you can consider the relationship between you and your client.
This is where we want to get into the specific tactics that you may employ to create, retain, and empower your clients for the entirety of your working relationship and beyond.
Think of what you’ll need to know in order to show up in the ways you identified in step 1.
For example, if you love giving gifts, then you’ll need to know your client’s mailing address and if they have any allergies.
If you want to hold your firm boundaries, you’ll need to know what those boundaries are and how to best communicate them.
Ask yourself the following questions:
What do you need to know about them?
Examples: Contact information. Pronouns. Mailing address. Birthday. Allergies or intolerances. Shirt size. Official business name. Social media links. Tech stack. Team roles and names. Their working hours. Their offers and pricing. The history of their company. Their values. Daily routine. Current planning processes. Upcoming launches and events.
What do they need to know about you?
Examples: Contact information. Pronouns. Where to go for support. What they have access to. My working hours. How we’ll track success. Dates and times for meetings with Zoom links. My team members and how to reach them if needed.
What do each of you need to know/be/do/have in order for this relationship to be successful?
Examples: What we’ll be doing in each session. What they need to prepare for each session. What happens if they need to cancel or reschedule. How we’ll be measuring success. Setting goals in our first session for the relationship. How often we’ll check in against those goals. Share resources that may be helpful to better understand the process or materials.
What do you need to share/show/teach to create safety and security in your working relationship?
Examples: Preemptively sharing common FAQs you’ve had with past clients so they can feel empowered about the process. Share blocks or challenges they may encounter and how they can move through them. Create Loom walk-throughs of material. Provide transcripts or recordings for them to review later. Explain how their information could be shared. Create explicit contracts and scopes of work.
#3 Make It Easy
Use a whiteboard or a platform like Lucidchart or Miro to start mapping out your client care journey before you even start writing content or setting up automations. Start from the time someone has their first conversation with you, walk up to their onboarding and kick-off session, carry through to their last session, right up until a few months after they finish working with you.
(Yes– after-care is part of client care.)
Go through all of your ideas and start mapping out what is going to happen, what the client will receive, and what you (and your team) will be doing or have to know in order to facilitate this path.
- What do you want someone to know before they start working with you?
- What will they get on their first day?
- What do you need to know day-in and day-out in order to maintain a high level of service?
- How do you keep your clients top-of-mind so your energy is focused on them when it needs to be?
- What systems do you like using?
- What will you use consistently?
- What will your check-points be throughout the service journey?
- What does the relationship look like after the service has ended?
Once you’re clear on the journey and the content you need to create, it’s time to turn it into an easy-to-use system.
My personal favourite for 1:1 or custom clients is Dubsado. It handles my contracts, invoicing, and I can create basic automations to welcome clients to the relationship, create tasks for me to remember to do (like send a welcome gift or birthday card), and it’s fully customizable so it’s super pretty (I seek art in all things).
For group programs, you can integrate your program with your email marketing platform (like Active Campaign or ConvertKit) and run a basic email automation program to send emails and communications as needed. Combine this with some sort of checklist in a project management system like ClickUp to make sure your team is mobilized and ready to serve your clients according to your care plan.
Do You Want to Creat Your Client Care Plan?
You can create your entire offer, from the client care journey, to the sales call, to the end-of-program follow-up with The Ops Shop team.
In our time together, we will spend time sorting out your offer, why it’s important to you, what it will teach your clients, and how you want them to feel.
Then we’ll create all the checkpoints you need to give them the best service experience of their life.
