How to Show Up for Your Clients from Home

As a result of the pandemic, the professional world is entering a new lifestyle – bridging the gap between working from home and in-office. Many small businesses, if they hadn’t before, are making the move to fully remote offices with virtual teams spread across the country.

If you are one of these businesses, the question becomes how can you show up for your clients when you are not meeting them in-person anymore?

The good news is most of the world has already made significant adjustments in what they expect from meetings – and most are comfortable with video meetings on providers like Zoom.

In fact, most professionals are preferring Zoom as meetings are shorter, more effective and don’t require any travel time.

And yet, there may still be a bit of a stigma if your client is back in the office and you have opted to work from home. Older professionals especially may have a harder time accepting that just because you have chosen to WFH indefinitely doesn’t mean you will be providing a lower quality service.

Build Trust Through Reliability

One of the fastest ways to build trust, is through reliability. And contrary to popular belief, trust can be built and strengthened quickly. How can you build your reliability up? We’re so glad you asked!

• Respond to emails incredibly fast – even if it is simply to say, “Hi, I saw your email. Let me look into that and get back to you.”
• Answer phone calls when clients call out of the blue. No one likes an interruption to their day, but taking an unscheduled call is a big deal. Too many of us screen calls to avoid un-planned stress but just the avoidance can cause more issues than taking the call as it comes in.
• Do what you say, when you said you’d do it: Perhaps one of the hardest things for any professional is to learn how to not over-promise. Learn your parameters and stay within them. If you say you’ll do something, be sure you can and by the time you said. It goes a long way, even for small tasks like sending an update.
• Don’t cancel last minute calls: Sometimes, sh*t happens. That’s okay. Just don’t make it a habit. Try to be early to your zoom meetings and be present as well. If you need to cancel, be sure to propose a few new time options immediately so that you can move forward with the call.  

It’s pretty much that easy. Of course, you can go bigger, but start here.