Customer Service Thinking for Graphic Designers
By: Anne Racioppi
Tags: Process Improvement, Designer, Customer Service, Communication Strategy

TIP 1: Focus on providing an unparalleled customer service experience to everyone you work with.

So many designers don’t have experience corresponding directly with clients. I was in this same boat before my current role. And what I learned to do was approach every email, conversation, meeting by looking through the lens of “service the client”. It will frame what you say. It will frame how you speak. It will frame your actions and reactions. If you’ve never tried it before, give it a try. See what you do differently. And try not to forget it as you start your day tomorrow.

Photo by henry perks on Unsplash

TIP 2: Live your life “solution-based”.

I’m a person who is considered HSP or Highly Sensitive Person. And for me, it’s hard to not be overcome with emotion. One of the best pieces of advice I received over the last three years was to approach every day as a solution-based employee. If you spend a few minutes thinking about what that means, you will hopefully notice that it eliminates negative reactions. It forces you to be proactive in the face of adversity. This is paramount to developing personal and professional maturity. How? You need to figure out a solution to any scenario that comes your way. There’s no time to react with emotion whether it be to vent or complain because you need to spend your time connecting the dots that nobody else has. And for a person like me who experiences intense emotions, being able to avoid the bad ones completely is really quite liberating.

Photo by CoWomen on Unsplash

TIP 3: Send your creative review emails pretending the recipient has no clue what you’re talking about.

That sounds weird but here it is written a different way: you can provide incredible customer service if you send design edits back to clients by recapping everything you did or explaining what’s going on. I do this simply by pretending that I’m emailing people that have no idea what I’m talking about. It allows me to simplify my language, recap, and provide an overview of what’s what. Why is this good customer service? In the industry I work in, brand managers and other functional and technical team leads are overly busy and pulled in a hundred different directions on a given day.

Think about the user experience from their shoes if they just had 4 back-to-back meetings then check their email for a couple minutes late in the afternoon to see you sent them updated banner ad designs with the simple text of “Please let me know if anything needs to be changed. Thanks.”

How long will it take this person to 1) know the job they’re looking at, 2) remember where it left off and 3) know what they are supposed to be looking at that’s different?

Now press rewind to that same opening of your email in their inbox but instead seeing “Hey John. Here’s the next round of the banner ads with a darker background and larger CTA button. There’s better contrast now between the background and the body copy. And the wider button really stands out as a nice, loud call to action. Are there any other changes you would like to make? Thanks.”

Do you see the difference? In the second example, I put all the work into bringing your attention to the exact spots I would like you to review and setting the stage by refreshing your memory for you. And if I’ve done my job well enough, I also setup the situation of mutual agreement by describing how my design changes created a positive effect.