Keeping Your Interior Design Business Strong When Demand Slows
Originally Written During Covid | Updated August 2025
My clients are used to “emergency” situations and thinking on their feet when on the job. Furniture arrives from the receiver with damages, the cake arrives and it’s sinking. As a former wedding planner, I have had to put out fires (thankfully, only one literal fire) on job sites and at event sites.
It was 100% in my nature to have a backup plan for bad weather, for speeches that are going off the rails, and for problematic family members who have maybe had one too many drinks. For my interior design clients, they have standard policies and procedures for when issues arise that spell out exactly how they will handle them. If they have good relationships with their vendors, it’s usually just a matter of a few emails to get the problem sorted out for a client. Damage control is in our nature.
Nevertheless, no line of work can really prepare you to take your business online overnight and I wanted to share a few things I have implemented for my clients to help them take care of their clients and their business during this time.
COMMUNICATION IS KEY
Write an email to every single active client. Let them know specifically how this is impacting their project AND what you will be doing to track progress and delays. Are you changing the way you communicate? Are your business hours changing? Will you be moving their meetings to virtual meetings? How are you going to help deliver the same results you normally would?
Write an email to every client you have a proposal out to. Touch base with them, check in to make sure they are doing okay, and remind them that you are still here and let them know you are ready when they are (if that’s the truth). If you are experiencing delays now and cannot take their project in the original timeline you laid out, let them know the new timeline.
Ready for this one? Reach out to clients you just finished working with. Yes! It’s called customer service and shows you care. This is a simple email to send. Something like “Hey, I’m thinking of you, and I’m so glad we were able to accomplish what we did together.” You’re not selling, just caring.
Adjust your email auto-responder. I’m not talking about your five-part welcome email series or your nurture sequence. I’m talking about going into your email settings and editing your auto-responder. If your state is under Shelter in Place, include that in your autoresponder. Let potential clients, current clients, and colleagues know that you are experiencing delays (if you are) and what your new email turnaround time is if your business hours have changed.
Last thing for communication: if you have a newsletter or social media presence, you will want to provide your followers and readers with information that is relevant to your business (the reason they signed up or started following you in the first place) and that offers them something of value. Don’t try to get cute or crafty and roll out something that isn’t what they signed up for. This dilutes your message and isn’t your zone of genius SO UNLESS YOUR CLIENTS ARE ASKING FOR THIS, stick to what they are asking you for in their dms, their emails, and their messages.
TECHNOLOGY
Even if you normally do most business by regular phone calls, I would strongly suggest moving your calls to FaceTime, Microsoft teams, Zoom, or some other software where you can have face-to-face time with your clients. Now more than ever we need that human connection, and this is a great way to amp up your client experience.
Show your clients how to do the work you would normally do for them by using the screen recording software Loom. I recommend my clients use this for their long-distance clients to show them how to measure their spaces or to go over their designs with them. I also love using this to review proposals, talk through changes, or show people how to do things in software. So much easier than typing out a long email or going back and forth with questions. Read this post for more ways you can use Loom to elevate your client experience.
Your clients are likely overloaded with screen time right now since we can’t do anything in person and I love sending voice notes to my clients to mix things up.
Do you have an exciting update for them?
Are you checking in because things are crazy, and you know they are stressed?
Use voice notes and continue to deliver a custom and impeccable client experience.
These are just a few things you can take action on right away to instantly feel more in control of your business and your clients during this surreal time. This goes without saying that you should also be reviewing your software, your website, how you communicate with your team and your clients, and your contracts (the contract you use with clients AND any agreements you are legally bound by right now).
