Customer Journey - Part 1
From both new designers who are figuring things out and prospective customers that may have never hired a designer or worked with Kayla Phillips Design, we often get asked, what’s the process?
That’s why we wanted to take a bit of time to share the strategic and streamlined customer journey that we use at Kayla Phillips Design to make the design process confusion free and seamless for both clients and us.
Welcome to part 1 — the inquiry!
Whether the first point of contact is in person, over Instagram or through Facebook Messenger, we’ll always point you to fill out our form: www.kaylaphillipsdesign.com/contact.
Why do we do this? 1) It helps us keep everything in one place so we don’t lose information and 2) It automatically populates into Dubsado, our CRM (client relationship manager), so that our team can collaborate. (More on how this works in later posts.) 3) It helps us know how to best direct the potential client.
When Kayla Phillips Design first began, and it was just me (Kayla), I didn’t have the advantage of a CRM or a studio manager. I was doing my best to collect information from all the channels and keep track of everything, and occasionally breaking projects down in Trello, but as the studio grew it became absolutely necessary to save time and lead clients through an effortless journey. We had heard from clients that their previous experiences with designers had lacked communication or a plan, so it was of utmost importance to make sure our process would be friction free and save both time and money.
A screenshot from our contact page.
We ask the questions shown above in order to understand and guide the customer (And to be honest, we’re always tweaking it!). It helps us quickly discern whether or not we can help. Once the form is submitted an automated email is sent to the potential customer with an intro packet attached that shares our work and some sample pricing. We then follow up individually, based on their responses, with the best next steps.
Generally, one of three things will happen:
If it’s not a good fit we offer any help we can. For example, if the potential client’s budget is lower than what we quote, we’ll often send alternative options. Maybe we’ll send the name of a newer freelancer or offer a lower deliverable. Even though our website doesn’t say anything about creating websites, we do get a lot of requests for this. More often than not, we’ll send recommendations of our favorite platforms and/or designers and agencies where they can find help.
If the project is very straightforward, we can quote a price right away. Usually this happens when we’re well acquainted with the business and the deliverable isn’t nuanced. It might be a set of five GIFs for Instagram, a simple t-shirt design, or vectorizing an old logo.
If the inquiry seems like it will be a good fit, for both us and the client, but the project is large or not as defined or we need more information or we don’t know the potential client, we’ll send a Calendly link to hop on a 15-20 minute call. (Right now we use Calendly to set up all meetings, though Dubsado just added a feature for this.) Having an automated way to set up meetings has saved so much time and relieves all the back and forth.
That’s it for Part 1. For Part 2 we will discuss the initial inquiry phone call and how we take the information we discuss to write up proposals.
Until then, I love answering questions, so send them my way!