It definitely feels as though it's becoming more and more established that we live in a 'hybrid' working world. Stanford University carried out a survey that found 55% of American workers would prefer a mix between home and office work. Furthermore, the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) has found that '44% of employers have said that they are putting in place additional measures or spend to support home working'.
With these changes to working patterns becoming more entrenched, how we approach our client relationships is changing too. As a client-facing professional, a hybrid offering is now vital to meeting your clients' expectations.
As Sarah Broderick, puts it incredibly well:
"The current shift in business relationships towards digital interactions has been happening over the past 10 years and COVID has established the permanence of this new reality – particularly with video first interactions – as a must-have in meeting the expectation of clients."
Hybrid Meetings & Clients
Every organisation has approached the past year differently. Moving forward, many are embracing hybrid working styles.
A 'hybrid work plan' is the policy that companies will agree on in terms of working hours and patterns.
The CIPD advises the following as key steps towards introducing hybrid working to an organisation:
1. Agreeing an overall strategic position on hybrid working for the organisation and development of a policy and supporting guidance reflecting the strategy.
2. Defining hybrid working with regard to the specific organisational context. This might include several different forms of hybrid working even within one organisation, depending on role requirements.
While things will probably be changing at your workplace, it’s really important to consider that means changes for your clients too.
As part of your client onboarding strategy, you should start to clarify how your clients (and potential clients) are working. Put yourself in their shoes to try and fit in with their new practices so that you can work together more effectively.
Not sure where to start? First off, try to establish the following:
Will the type of client meetings you hold simply be down to whether you're working from home or at the office on a particular day?
Could a different type of meeting (i.e. virtual vs. face-to-face) be considered at different points of the onboarding process?
How to have better (hybrid) client meetings
As the go-to client meeting platform, we have some ideas around how to make the most out of the time spent with your clients.
Here are our top points to consider when approaching virtual or in-person client meetings:
1. Prep, prep, prep
Your pre-meeting work is absolutely essential to the success of a client meeting.
Meeting preparation entails:
Sharing all the relevant documents (such as Syft reports) with your clients ahead of time. This is so that they can digest the data and maybe come up with questions before your meeting.
Making sure you set a very clear objective for your meeting. Share this with your client before your meeting.
Setting a timed agenda for your meeting.
Getting your prep right will mean that, whether you're jumping on a virtual call or greeting your client in the office, your meetings will stay short and sweet.
If there’s anything that this pandemic has taught us, it’s this – time is precious.
With our new perspective on working life, we want to budget less time for redundant and drawn-out client meetings. Making client relationships more productive gives us (AND our clients) more time to spend on other things – believe us, they'll thank you for it.
2. Keeping to the agenda is key
Whether you're meeting face-to-face or virtually with your client, having an effective agenda (and keeping to it!) will ensure that your client gets the best out of your time together.
At Connect4, we define an effective agenda as one that:
is visible to all attendees throughout the meeting
has timed agenda items – with an assigned timekeeper who will move the meeting along
follows (or might be saved as) a template for future meetings.
3. Take (digital) minutes!
If you have the right tools, minute-taking can be easy to balance while you're talking to your clients, and quick to share when the meeting is over.
Gone are the days of the A4 pad!
If you must take a pad to your meeting, make it an iPad. Even if you're meeting face-to-face, take your minutes digitally and send them to all meeting attendees as soon as the meeting ends.
The trick to hybrid working habits will be making sure that, whatever your client meeting processes are, you are consistent at every meeting – be that online or in person.
4. Fully embrace the post-meeting space
At Connect4, we really prioritise the time just after a meeting has finished.If you're willing to spend those few extra minutes finishing off your meeting processes effectively, we guarantee that you'll notice a huge difference in your client meeting productivity.
Here are the things you need to do post-client meeting:
Assign actions based on everything discussed;
Share your meeting minutes, as well as a short and snappy summary, with all meeting attendees; and
Make sure that your follow-up meeting has been scheduled and invitations have been sent.
It's always good to talk with clients
We firmly believe that it's good to talk with clients.Whether your client meetings are virtual or in-person, effective communication is the key to being the best client service professional you can be.
Relationships are at the heart of business. We feature this in It’s good to talk with clients, our series that uncovers the importance of client relationships through conversations.
Over the last year, we interviewed leading industry figures (using the Connect4 platform, of course) and asked them all about ‘talk’ and how they use it to develop stronger client relationships to grow their business.
This series is an excellent listen for anyone in client-facing roles looking to gain insights from client experts – we even spoke to Syft Analytics's Van Kyriazis about the value of Bringing the human touch to client meetings.
The video below highlights client experts telling us their reasons as to why ‘it’s good to talk with clients’:
Key Take-Aways from the Connect4 Community:
Hybrid work is here to stay;
Your company needs to put a 'hybrid work plan' in place – be sure to consider how this will affect your client meeting strategy; and
There are 4 key factors to having better virtual and face-to-face client meetings: Prep; a timed agenda; taking minutes; and embracing the post-meeting space.
We hope that these insights help you move forward, as you navigate client meetings in an increasingly hybrid working culture.
On a positive note, it's important to remember that hybrid work and the normalisation of hybrid meetings bring a huge benefit to client service industries, especially to SMEs.
This benefit is the democratization of your industry. Offering virtual and face-to-face meetings means that your clients no longer expect a swanky office or fancy lunch meetings just to facilitate a conversation. The playing field has been levelled.
If your regular client communication is on point, you're winning!
About the author
Kathryn is the Social Media Community Manager at OST Marketing. Previously, she was the Digital Marketing Executive at Cambridge-based startup, Connect4.