Client Experience Tech Tip: How to Have Fewer In-Person Meetings

Apr 3

Ever wrap an in-person or synchronous meeting and think, “That should have been an email!”?

Yeah, ain’t nobody got time for that.

As much as we want to stop it, we are getting busier and busier. Our attention spans are getting shorter. Our need for instant gratification is growing by the minute (thanks Amazon Prime, Reels and Tiktok videos, smartphones, etc.).

People’s expectations are changing and they value convenience and ease. COVID forced a lot of this on businesses, and many companies grew because of offering online services, curbside pickup, and alternate delivery methods. ← so much so that they are now changing their business models entirely.

So what does this mean for your interior design business?

Whether you like it or not, you are a luxury service provider. Your clients don’t NEED to hire a designer (although we’ve all seen what happens when they don’t….eeeek…).

Your clients hire you because they believe you and your service will result in a much better design, and that the design process will be uncomplicated and headache-free. Making the process less time consuming. Less stressful.

And one way to do that is to have fewer meetings. GASP

I see many people who add and add and add to their services, thinking the client will pay more if they do more meetings, more calls, more check-ins, more x, y, z.

When in reality, people value having whitespace in their calendar and more time back in their day - not more meetings that could have been emails.

This is why I 100% of the time recommend Loom to my clients and other luxury service providers.

While certain meetings should always be live, there are many that can be replaced with loom (heck, we even stopped doing monthly team meetings at my company because we realized they could be Loom videos and Asana messages - yeah, no unnecessary meetings or even emails over here).

Here are some things you can replace (or elevate) with Loom videos:

Ever wrap an in-person meeting and think, “That should have been an email!”? What does this mean for your interior design business? Your clients hire you because they believe you will result in a much better design, and the process will be less time

During the onboarding process:

Team intros*

Tutorial on how to use your software*
Tutorial on how to share inspiration images*
Review of their contract

During the design process:

Explaining furniture layout options

Presenting the design plan (for virtual or design day clients)
Presenting design reselection options
Explaining how to request revisions*
Tutorial for how to remit payment, or check order status*

*create these videos once and use them with every client

The list goes on…

So, before you add another meeting, think: how can I make this easy? Is there value in meeting 1:1 with the client to do this, or can we do this with a Loom and make it more convenient and less stressful for our clients.

From my 1:1 work with designers, I can assure you there is AT LEAST one 1:1 meeting you can probably cut from your design process.

Check out a few more examples here of how you can use video messaging in your process.