116. Why Service-Based Businesses Lose Referrals: 3 Client Experience Mistakes to Avoid

Phylicia Pough: 00:00:55

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Hey friend. Today we are talking about three client experience mistakes to avoid as a service based business because it might be costing you referrals.

So many service providers rely on referrals, but you might not know that you are unknowingly turning clients away. And I have seen this happen firsthand and so I want to kind of help you avoid some of the common mistakes that I have seen.

When it comes to word of mouth, we know just how powerful a referral is. And a client experience directly impacts your referrals, whether that is a great client experience or a poor client experience.

If it was great, then people are going to refer and recommend you. But people are not going to refer someone if it's going to make them look bad because the referral ends up being a reflection of them.

And so if there is a poor client experience that they've had, they're not going to refer you because it's really related to trust. And honestly, if you give me a bad referral, I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to trust your word. Right. So what is a client experience?

Very simply, client experience is the journey a client takes from first contact to off boarding. And now this experience is not just about you delivering the service or fulfilling your promise to them.

It's really about how they feel along the way.

And so in today's episode, but also the next two episodes, I'm really going to be focusing on client experience because it is very important for service based businesses. So let's get into these mistakes. All right, so mistake number one that you want to avoid is communication issues. Okay?

Not having clear, not having timely communication. This presents a problem for the client. The client gets frustrated when they do not know what to expect.

So I'm going to give you some examples of what poor communication might look like. So let's say for example, your lead process looks like somebody submitting some type of form or an application.

So poor communication would look like there's no follow up email or maybe there's just a pop up that says thank you without any additional information. Why is this a problem? It's a problem because the client or the prospect, they do not know what to expect next.

When are you going to follow up with them? When should they expect to hear a reply from you? Is it going to be 24 hours? Is it going to be a week?

We have to set expectations as the service provider. Okay. Also, an issue that can come up in terms of communication is just unclarity in terms of the deliverables and the timeline. Right.

So a client might assume that their project is going to be done within two weeks, let's say. But maybe you really meant that it's going to be two weeks from when you receive all of their materials.

And so now that they had this different expectation, they are frustrated and they feel a little bit misled. Okay. And so poor communication created this problem. Right.

A better way of doing this is to be explicitly clear in what you are going to deliver and the timeline in which you are going to deliver that. Okay. So that's mistake number one, having communication issues throughout your experience.

Mistake number two that you want to avoid is an over complicated process. Now systems does not have to mean complicated and in fact systems should be simple. Right?

But an over complicated process leads to frustration, it leads to overwhelm which are negative feelings.

And if someone has a negative feeling while they are working with you, they're going to assume that other people are going to have that same experience and therefore they're not going to refer you. Okay, so what are some signs of an over complicated process?

If people are having to jump through hoops to book with you, if you have different things set up in different tools and they do not seamlessly move from one portion of the process to the next, that's over complicated.

If your client or your prospect is having to create logins or multiple logins, if there is a bunch of back and forth in email and if your process just has a lot of unnecessary steps, these are all signs of having an over complicated process. And so you want to find ways to streamline, you want to find ways to simplify.

And the way that you do this is you can get feedback from the people that you have already worked with and ask them how they felt about the process. Right. And you yourself go through your own process as if you were the client. And you might be able to see some areas where you can simplify.

Okay, that's mistake number two, having an over complicated process. And then finally mistake number three. Okay. And this one might seem like a no brainer, but it's really not. Okay.

Mistake number three that you want to avoid if you don't want to lose referrals is making it hard to refer you. Okay? So the number one issue here is actually not asking for the referral.

Don't assume that your clients are just automatically going to refer you when you are offboarding your clients. You can include asking for a referral in that part of your process in addition to not asking for the referral.

Another issue that comes up in this area is not having a clear referral process. So people might not know what type of referrals you're looking for. They might not know what to say when recommending you.

So just make it easy for your clients to refer you. And again, your process does not have to be complicated. It does not have to have all these steps and do all of these things.

But you just want to make it clear how this part of your process operates and clearly communicate that with your client. Okay?

So just to recap the three client experience mistakes that you want to avoid if you don't want to lose referrals is number one, you want to avoid any communication issues that come up. Number two, you want to avoid having a complicated process. And then number three, you want to avoid making it hard to refer you.

All right, so your action step for this week is to audit your current, current client experience. Okay? Audit your own experience. Where can you improve your communication, where can you simplify and where can you include referral requests?

Now if this is something that you are looking for additional support in, then I definitely encourage you to sign up for the Lead to Loyalty challenge. We are going to dig into all of these things.

We talked about the mistakes to avoid, but what are the actual solutions and what steps can you take and what things can you implement in your client experience that will improve it and help you to increase your referrals. That's part of what we're going to talk about in the challenge.

So click the link in the show notes to get all of the details and I look forward to seeing you in the next episode where I'm going to be talking about how your client experience might be costing you money. Okay? So stay tuned. Thank you so much for tuning in. With grace and gratitude, I will see you in the next episode. Hey, friend.

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