At the core of every successful project is a satisfied client. 

Project management is a service industry whose primary goal is quality output. 

"The sole reason we are in business is to make life less difficult for our clients." Matthew Odgers

In creative/digital agency, project management can get incredibly complicated because various clients are from different industries. Diverse work can be a challenge for a project management organization.

Utilizing Client management tools, you can easily overcome potential issues and create a transparent workflow environment for your clients. 

Before you start client onboarding, there are a few things you need to get in line. 

Client management culture of your agency, you need to acknowledge the following:

• Transparency 
• Constant communication 
• Alignment 

To perfect your relationship with clients and improve your final output, here are some pain points you need to consider before acquiring new clients. 

1. Educate about a client's niche 

To fully engage with client expectations, we must deeply observe a client's niche. Educate your team about a client's niche and research competition to create a reference point for a project assessment, workflow, and execution. 

In client onboarding, we need a strategic plan to improve the client's business and present a reliable solution. 

The collaboration will be easily achievable because there will not be a stumbling point in communication. 

The intent is to be on the same page. By understanding a niche, we create trust and make our clients comfortable seeking advice or pointing to a potential issue. 

2. Productivity time tracking

Once you achieve collaborative communication with your client, there is a specific deadline to execute the project. 

Considering a client's expectations and your team's productivity level, you must create an optimal workflow, carefully create a task timeline and a specific deadline, and predict resource consumption. 

Productivity time tracking can give you valuable metrics to create a risk estimation of how long and how many resources your team spends on a specific task or project overall. 

Advanced project management software can give you much more than a time tracking tool. There are unique processes that are not recognized by average productivity time tracking tools, such as:

• Niche Research 
• Brainstorming
• Team communication
• Client meetings

These processes are not a waste of time. They are an integral part of project workflow; you shouldn't align them as unproductive. 

Every aspect that involves resource consumption, project creation, team and client communication, task delegation, distribution, and finally, project execution is a part of productivity time tracking. 

3. Transparent tasks and team discussions 

To improve client management, you must involve a client in team discussions. That way, you create a transparent workflow, and the client can easily monitor the work process. It is a great way to fill the gap in communication. 

Team communication with a client requires to: 

• Share progress
• Share documentation
• Be responsive
• Get feedback

Sharing crucial processes will improve your workflow, increase clarity, and transform client communication. 

4. Client messages responsiveness

As we said before, client satisfaction is our primary goal. To realize that, we need to acknowledge every concern our client has. 

If the client asks something, no matter how unimportant the question seems, answer it. Because if you don't, it could negatively affect workflow. 

Always take time for a client query, and create a system that will consolidate all client's expectations. 

Client messages responsiveness needs to include:

• Manage expectations
• Monitor all channels
• Align your schedule

Keep in mind that the clients don't want just a fast response; they want you to be interested in discussion and look forward to solving a potential problem. 

5. Workspace organization

A creative digital agency needs a unique system to sort all the advertisement material. Cloud-based project management tools have created advanced features that help you to upload, edit, and overview all generated content. 

To manage all storing assets, you need to create easily shareable folders forming a set of rules that will simplify the client oversees in project processes, such as:

• Storage rules
• Sharing rules
• Asset management rules

It may sound like an unnecessary job to do. Still, when you create a workspace organization ground rules, you will simplify a client overview and always be up to date in client collaboration. 

6. Flexible workflow

There are no simple projects. A project is a complex process that includes the collaboration of team members, stakeholders, and clients. 

And much more. 

Things that can severely damage your workflow:

• Unexpected tasks
• Strict deadlines 
• Delivery problems
• Communication issues

Keep in mind that project management is accurate it needs to be; on the other hand, it must be extremely flexible. 

But how do you incorporate those two extremes?

The answer is improvisation. 

But to keep things straight, improvisation is not something you should use daily, but it needs to be an ace in the sleeve.

And when you can't improvise - go with plan B. 

7. Plan B

It is not the most obvious thing to do if you want to perfect client management. But remember that creative digital marketing is a dynamic process, and to be up to date, you need to have a plan B. 

Client communication can be overwhelming sometimes, and to keep your client satisfied, you need to have a broad perspective from which some processes can get a better view. 

Having plan B and being flexible can get you an advantage and prepare for some significant changes in the workflow or sudden problems than can occur. 

Final thoughts 

As a Creative/Digital agency, you will acquire very demanding clients. 

To keep up with their ideas and requests, you should strongly consider using advanced project management tools that will significantly help you overview a project and easily communicate with team members and clients. 

Client management is fast evolving, and to keep up with the industry demands; you need to incorporate automatization processes if you want to perfect client communication and collaboration. 

What is your main problem in communication with clients?

Please leave a comment!

Author: Aleksandar Radosevic

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