If you’re a professional who works individually with clients, then you understand how important it is to source new ones and retain your existing patrons.
This includes careers like real estate, medical practices, law, and insurance. Clients are your primary source of income, so it is a priority to provide them with a positive experience.
This requires the use of effective strategies for keeping real estate clients. One of the most important tactics you should focus on is client responsiveness.
Clients care about several aspects of your interaction with them, responsiveness being near the top of the list. This is critical for clients to understand what’s going on and feel supported throughout the process.
To help you sharpen your client responsiveness, take a look at the techniques we have outlined below.
Create an Action Plan
The first thing you should do is to create an action plan of how you’ll respond to clients.
If you’re just winging your client interactions, then you won’t offer a uniform experience. You may unintentionally be more responsive to some clients than others.
Without knowing it, you might be neglecting a few of your clients. You’ll think that everything is going smoothly and then lose someone out of the blue.
To ensure that everyone you work with gets the same experience, you need to develop procedures about how you’ll respond to clients. The exact process doesn’t matter, just as long as you do create something to stick with after each interaction.
For example, you might follow up with a call a few days later and then send an email in a couple of weeks. Understand that your clients need you to respond promptly, so figure out what you can sustainably do to meet this need.
Humanize Your Interactions
Next, consider humanizing your interactions with clients.
Developing a plan for responding to clients is certainly useful, but it becomes less effective if your interaction feels robotic. If you’re using an automated messaging system and this is obvious to a client, then they may feel less valued after the interaction.
Instead, you want your clients to feel like you are responding directly to them. This requires you to humanize your approach.
You can do this in several ways, a few of which include active listening, showing empathy, asking personal (yet appropriate) questions, and trying to find shared interests.
This will show your client that you’re also human and can connect with them on more than just a transactional level. As a result, they’ll have a much better experience and are much more likely to continue working with you.
Keep Up With Technology
You’ll also need to keep up with technology.
This means being available where your clients want to access you. With so many advances in technology, you can now be reached at any time with minimal effort.
This is something that many clients desire and expect. They might have a simple question or an in-depth concern that you can quickly address if you’re easily accessible to them.
To offer this, you’ll need to be available on all platforms that a client might use. This includes a website, mobile app, phone, email, and even instant chat.
The more platforms that clients can reach you through, the more likely they are to get the response they need. As a result, they’re easier to retain because they’ll appreciate your accessibility and responsiveness.
Not keeping up with technology is limiting yourself and hurting the client’s experience.
Ask for Feedback
Finally, you should ask your clients for feedback about your interactions.
All of the other strategies mentioned above are useful, but they are irrelevant if you don’t understand what your client wants. If you think that you know and act accordingly, you may be missing the mark and pushing them further away.
One of the best ways to accurately identify what a client wants is by asking for feedback. Ask them what they thought of their interaction with you, what they liked, what they disliked, and if they have any suggestions for improvement.
Listen to this information with open ears and use it to change how you approach them. When you’re able to deliver what a client wants, they’ll never think to look elsewhere.
Doing this also shows that you care about how your clients feel. They will pick up on this and feel supported, knowing that you’re committed to bettering their experience.
Closing Thoughts
Client responsiveness is an essential component of the client experience. If you’re unresponsive, then clients will leave you and seek a competitor that responds quickly.
Alternatively, improving your client responsiveness will vastly increase retention. Satisfied clients have no reason to stray, which means that you should be focusing on responsiveness.
A few methods for doing this include creating an action plan, humanizing your interactions, keeping up with technology, and asking for feedback. These tactics ensure you have procedures to follow and that they’re accurately delivering what a client needs.
While client responsiveness might seem minor, it matters far more to your clients than you think. Use this information to your advantage by bolstering your responsiveness!
