Outsourcing 101: Client Care

Are you taking amazing care of your clients? If you have any service-based business, then it’s not optional to deliver great value to your clients whether that means answering their questions, assisting with technical aspects, or setting up calls and meetings.

Often as your business grows, the number of clients becomes overwhelming because everyone is requesting your time and attention at once. How do you balance this client who needs a call and that client who expects work and another lead who you don’t even know if you have time to work with yet?

Enter the client care manager. This is a higher level virtual or in-person assistant position which is not only amazing to get tasks off your plate so you can focus on the value you bring to clients, but also to provide extra value to your customers.

What kind of tasks are included in client care?

Personally, we like to look at the entire process, from arranging calls for a lead to requesting testimonials from a graduating client. Anything that requires interaction with a pending, current or past client can be under the purview of the client care manager.

From our series, this can include calendaring, email, even setting up payments and contracts with clients.

What type of person is best in this role?

It should go without saying but a client care manager needs to care about your clients. The core personality trait is someone who finds joy and fulfillment from being helpful and also likes the same people you serve.

Imagine for a moment that you work with driven, high level, type-A men who work in the sports field and are uber competitive. If your client care manager finds that personality over bearing, obnoxious, and rude then it’s not a good fit. Having a clear picture of who you serve will be important to finding the right person to assist you in serving them.

The ideal client care manager should also have a good grasp of details and be able to manage many tasks in a single day. It won’t serve you if your assistant is constantly asking which client gets weekly calls and can’t find the phone number for clients for your calendar.

You can help this person be successful by having a central location for client data including which program they’ve purchased, the length of calls, or level of access they’ve purchased and how to contact the clients.

How does a client care manager help the business?

In addition to giving you back your time to focus on serving clients, not answering administrative emails, and scheduling calls, the right client care manager will improve the value of your service.

Some entrepreneurs will hire for this position to appear bigger as an agency, but it’s more than ego. You’re communicating to your client that you care about their needs and are putting the resources in place to serve them – even when you’re unavailable. Think about it, if you have a full day client, a vacation, or are ill then your client care manager is there to support your clients.

Having a great client care manager in position will enable you to increase the volume of clients you serve, most times above and beyond paying for the expense of hiring an additional team member.

Would your practice benefit from a client care manager? What concerns or questions do you have about working with one?