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How to make a hybridized client relationship
work for your team
Now that online meetings and emails have claimed spaces that in-person interactions used to hold, people are having to adapt to new styles of communication. In some ways, online communication has improved workflow, providing answers to questions more quickly, or allowing the client and designer to share materials without meeting in person. However, there are some problems that can arise when aspects of in-person communication, like body language and tone of voice, are absent. Knowing a few tactics to address these potential challenges in advance can help you make the most of client interactions.
Tips and Tricks for Seamless Communication
Keep a record of any communication that doesn't come with a paper trail
Online or in-person meetings are great for quick communication, but the content of the meeting can be forgotten easily, leaving people confused later on about what was discussed, decisions that were made, or questions that were raised. Writing down key points from your interaction and saving them to a cloud-based storage system helps your team and the client keep up with progressions in the project.
Ask a question any time you're confused about what the client is requesting
Emails and instant messages can be great for quick communication, but a quick email can easily come laced with a lack of clarity or further necessary information. When you receive a message from a client that leaves you with a question, ask it! If you don't ask, the client will assume you understand them perfectly, which can create misunderstandings and unanswered expectations in the future.
Brevity, efficiency, and details
Keep communications brief, efficient, and appropriately detailed: reduce long-winded messages to their main takeaways, leave no detail left unmentioned, and try to anticipate questions that your message may bring up for your client.
Include as few people in the Cc line of your emails as possible: people involved in every step of the project may need to be involved in every bit of communication that happens, but getting more people involved than necessary may create chaos.
Express your excitement, interest in the project, gratitude for client helpfulness, etc.,, but make sure the bulk of your email or message is about the topic at hand. It's likely that your client (and yourself!) have dozens of messages arriving in their inbox every day - keeping your emails objective may make your client more likely to prioritize a response to your email.
Summary:
Write down key takeaways from client meetings
Ask questions!
Keep it simple
Goals:
Use technology to your advantage to more efficiently reach project goals
Extra tips:
Respond to client messages in a reasonable time frame
Don't take responses personally if they lack positive emotion - everyone has a different communication style!
When unsure what the client means, repeat the client's words back to them, following with, "do I understand you correctly?" to reduce misunderstandings.
Real World Application
The communities of Broadacres in central Athens and Pinewoods in north Athens requested in fall 2024 to have their community centers’ exteriors updated and remodeled for their various goals. Given these projects’ locations, we were lucky to have the opportunity to meet each client in-person multiple times throughout the 4-month semester. However, a lot of our interactions still had to happen over email, giving us practice navigating designer/client communication digitally as well as in-person. All communication methods have their own challenges, but while people are born with interpersonal skills, the same cannot be said about digital skills – these projects were great modes of practicing these skills in preparation for working with bigger clients in years to come.
Because digital communication developed as we moved further into each project, these lessons and learned skills came with time. Our introduction to communication challenges came when one of the clients entered the collaboration with misunderstandings of what we would provide them. To avoid disappointments down the line, we made sure to quickly clarify the scope of the project and what our role as students would be in it. Clarifying this early on made further interactions more clear because both our group and the client were on the same page about what our final goal was.
Communication is vital to the health of a human relationship - a client/designer relationship is no exception. Communicating with each client using the outlined suggestions above greatly increased the likelihood of success that we would have in the Pinewoods and Broadacres projects. Making adjustments to one's communication style is an effort that won't go unnoticed!
Sources:
Cover photo: Susannah Parker
https://www.istockphoto.com/illustrations/collaboration-office
https://www.istockphoto.com/illustrations/effective-virtual-communication
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