Overwhelmed to organized - a client case study
Today I'm going to do something a little bit different.
I'm going to go through a case study of a client of mine and paint a picture for you of a situation where we went from someone who was disorganized and overwhelmed in their business to organized and creating systems that actually function and support their business, and take work off their plate. If your client journey or CRM systems need work (or need to be created), follow along, because you can use these same steps in your own business.
So if you're ready for this story time, let's jump into it!
Meet my overwhelmed client
This particular person happens to be a photographer, but this situation is something that I have seen many other times with coaches and other service based business owners.
This person happens to use Dubsado as their CRM software, but I have seen situations like this with other Dubsado users, and with 17hats users, and other types of software as well.
So this is not a unique situation, but I'm going to use this particular photographer who uses Dubsado as my example.
So this person had been using Dubsado for several years before they reached out to me, and they knew they were not taking full advantage of it and that they were basically paying for something that they were only partially using.
They didn't really understand all of the features and the capabilities of what it could do for them. They wanted it to be something that could automate things and take work off their plate, they just didn't know how, and they didn't have time.
They had tried many different things over the years, and it meant that the software was a mess, with old templates and workflows and things that were not working for them.
But they didn't know what to do to organize it and actually make it functional, and that's when they came to me.
I should also mention that because this person was struggling with figuring out the automation and other capabilities of Dubsado, they were pretty much doing everything manually.
They had some automation set up where if a lead reached out to them through their website, that lead would get an automated, "Thanks for reaching out. We'll get back to you" type of email, but there wasn't really anything beyond that.
They had some email templates in Dubsado, but also some templates saved in their email account, and messages saved on their phone that they used to send people all the time, rather than having a process set up and automated as much as possible. So they had these templates, but they were still manually picking and choosing and sending them to people.
They were creating invoices manually every time. They were doing lead follow up manually, which meant that a lot of lead follow up wasn't happening at all, so they were losing leads because they weren't getting back to them.
They were also manually booking every single appointment on their calendar, going back and forth to choose dates and times that work with both of them, manually sending links for things - so really not using the full capabilities that Dubsado has to offer, and creating a lot of unnecessary work for themselves.
Step one: Map your process
When this client and I started working together, the first thing we did was to do an assessment of their Dubsado account and identify what needed to be cleaned up, and what needed to be created or added in order to make their life easier.
What were the capabilities that would really make a difference for them in their business if they really started taking advantage of them? What we settled on was that they really wanted a set process for their services with email templates and things mapped out so that things would either go out automatically or they could just press send at a designated time and date.
To do this, we made a list of all of their current services and all of the steps in the process for each service.
What happens from the point of someone reaching out as a lead all the way through their photography session happening and the photo or product delivery afterwards? And any follow up that has to happen all the way through from the beginning to the very end of that relationship. What are all of the steps that need to happen? Luckily, because this person is a photographer, a lot of the processes for their different services were very similar. We took their main service and mapped it all out, and then we duplicated that as much as possible for the other services and just took out things that weren't relevant or added things that were a different step for that particular service.
I guarantee if you're reading this and you're not a photographer, there are still ways that you can do this in your own business, because there are very few businesses that I've seen where their services are so completely different that they don't share any steps in common.
Step two: What's missing in your process?
The big thing that we did when we mapped out all of those services was we identified where steps and touch points were currently happening, but then we also looked for areas that needed touch points that weren't there.
For example, this business owner decided that when they had a consultation with someone, they wanted to send a follow up "Thank you for the call" email right away. This was not something that they were already doing.
They also wanted to make sure that clients were getting a "Welcome and thank you for booking us" email as soon as they signed a contract or paid an invoice, and that was not something that was already happening either.
We went through the entire process and identified these different areas where an extra touch point was needed or would really add to the client's experience, like check-in emails the month of or the week of an event to make sure that people know all of the details of where they're going, what they need to prepare, and so on.
We also decided that this business owner would benefit from having a follow up email after everything was done, the session had happened, the photos had been delivered, everything, to say "Thank you for working with us and please leave a testimonial" and provide links for that as well.
I find a lot of business owners skip out on this, and it means that you are missing feedback, testimonials, potential referrals, and repeat clients!
This is the thing that I encourage everyone to look out for when they are mapping their process. Do you do a follow up? Do you actually ask for a testimonial? That's very important.
Step three: Start using your new systems
Once we had all of the workflows and automation set up according to the new client journey, then we did some training together to learn how to actually use these new systems and put everything into practice.
If you create systems and automation, but you don't know how to use them, chances are that you won't use them! You'll just keep doing things the way that you were doing them before, because that's what you're used to. This means that those systems aren't really helping your business.
With everyone I work with, I like to make sure that they actually know what they're doing when we get these systems in place and they actually start using them. This is how we find out if they're working or not.
Step four: Test and tweak
As the client started using these systems, they identified areas where things maybe didn't happen the way that they thought they would.
We made some tweaks, we tested things, and we made sure that it actually worked in practice the way we had envisioned it and that it was actually doing the things that this client wanted and needed to make their business easier.
And honestly, that's the most important part for me.
If it's not making your business easier, then why are we doing this?
Step five: Enjoy your new free time!
The really exciting part for me was that because we had created these clear processes and we had put clear workflows in place for this person's entire client process for all of their different services, they were able to actually bring in an assistant to help them with Dubsado and other administrative tasks in their business.
Because things were cleaned up, there was now a clear path to follow. This made it really easy to bring in someone else and show them how to use these things. So not only does this business owner have great systems to support their business and make it easier, but also an assistant to help do these things and help this business owner save time and stress.
When you are in a place in your business where everything is disorganized and overwhelming, it's really hard to bring in someone in an assistant capacity to take on some of those daily tasks, because it's not clear and organized for them. There's probably not a set process for them to follow, and it can be overwhelming and challenging for both of you.
Going through this whole process of organizing things, creating systems and processes, making sure that things actually work and support your business means that you are in a great position to get additional support and bring somebody in, and it's going to be so much easier and clearer for both of you.
Meet my organized client!
Now I am excited to say that this business owner is taking way more advantage of the features of Dubsado and they've got some great workflows that are working for them!
They're not missing out on responding to leads anymore.
They've got regular touch points with their clients, so their clients are supported and they always know what to do.
They're getting more testimonials in their business.
Like I mentioned, they've got an assistant who has a framework to follow and it's really just making this client's life and their business so much easier, which I am very excited about.
This case study of going from overwhelmed and disorganized to organized and functional is a very common one for me. These are things that I see all the time.
So if you are in the more messy part of the process, don't feel bad. It's not your fault, and there are lots of things that you can do to get to a more organized and calm and effective situation in your business.
If this is something that you're interested in talking to someone about, please leave a comment or feel free to reach out to me.