How Interior Designers Can Get Out of Their Inbox and Back to Their Design Work
Updated September 2023
Whether you’re a big firm or a small solopreneur, whether you’ve been in it for years or are just starting out, if you are feeling overwhelmed, I can almost 100% guarantee that it’s because you need to focus on your client experience.
I mean, obviously, clients are everything in business. If you don’t have them, you kind of don’t have a business.
But when you have too many, or you’ve grown too fast, or you don’t have a process for managing your services, you’ll quickly find yourself in the weeds and buried in your inbox. And then not only do your clients suffer, but you do, and so does your business.
My clients always come to me at first thinking they need to hire a team, switch software, or quit their business (yes, I had two clients who initially said they weren’t sure if they should keep their design firm open). But once we dig in, we quickly find out that it’s the client management piece that’s gotten out of control.
Clients are emailing and texting them all day and all night. Clients not knowing what to expect and not having a good experience. Clients taking control of the projects. Clients ghosting them after presentation.
You might even resonate with some of these quotes from my clients, from before we started working together:
“I feel like I am just answering emails and answering questions all day. I want to be more present for my family, more confident in the direction my business is going, and want the process for clients to be more clear.”
“I have no time to formalize any of my processes and train my team on them. I just want to run efficiently, grow and take care of my clients, and get their projects wrapped up in a timely fashion leaving them coming back for more and referring me.”
“I feel like I spend six hours a day typing emails and verifying communication and have very little time to actually be designing.”
“I don't want to constantly be reinventing the wheel every time I take on a new project. It's exhausting. I just want to have a process that I follow every time and that I can use to take more control over the direction of the projects, instead of them taking over me!”
In each of these instances, the answer to their problem was to create a formalized client experience process.
What I mean by that is a step-by-step process to take their clients from the first email inquiring about working together to the final project wrap up email and request for feedback.
Within those steps, I identify (and create) the key pieces of information and emails to send at every interaction that gives potential clients and clients all the info they need to feel good about deciding to work with them (or it screens them out so they don’t spend time on prospects who aren’t a good fit for services).
It all boils down to your interior design client experience process.
Here’s why:
A client experience instantly creates a formal process that anyone from your team can take clients through. From inquiry, to onboarding, to fulfillment, to offboarding. If you run through the steps, it will be like “magic” as my clients and their teams will say. You don’t even have to think, you just check.things.off.the.list.
A client experience sets boundaries that protect you and your time and lets your client enjoy their time with you. Let’s face it: your clients have likely either NEVER hired someone like you, OR, they did and it wasn’t great. By laying out all the boundaries up front, you’re letting them know how to make it amazing to work together, AND it lays out the process so they feel comfortable in knowing what’s next and what’s expected of them.
I could go on and on about the benefits of the client experience (in fact, I do here in my conversation with LuAnn Nigara).
Over the last six+ years I’ve created these personalized systems for interior designers and wedding planners and have seen the immediate results when they are used in real life design and event planning studios.
Get out of your inbox and back to your design work.
Check out the client experience templates here:
Interior Designer Client Experience Templates
Professionally written emails for every step of your design process, professionally written Canva templates for your investment guide, welcome guide, closing guide, and more. All you have to do is plug in your branding and photos, and off you go.
Grab them here, and let’s see what we can make possible for your business when you can finally focus on the creative work that inspired you to start your business in the first place.
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