298: How to Answer Client Questions
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Summary
How do you handle answering questions from clients? As a business owner, we field hundreds of questions every week about our business. From policies and procedures, to situation specific details, we never know what the next question will be. Today, we discuss 5 things it takes to answer questions well and to make your client’s feel like they’re valued and heard. Natasha O’Banion, from Automated CEO, answers, “What does building client loyalty look like?”
Main topics:
Why we struggle answering questions
In-person vs written/online
Reading body language
Why you need to pause and take a breath
Ask a Biz Coach
Main takeaway: Responding honestly means you’re building trust and telling the other person you respect them!
Links
Episode 064: https://www.petsitterconfessional.com/episodes/064-common-client-questions
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Join Natasha’s private group at Automated CEO and use PSC20 for 15% off.
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A VERY ROUGH TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE
Provided by otter.ai
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
clients, questions, person, business, answer, listening, pet, referral, policies, talking, people, associates, long, brand ambassador, response, information, scripts, respect, check, dog
SPEAKERS
Meghan, Collin
00:10
Hello, I'm Meghan. I'm Collin. And this is Pet Sitter professional and open and honest discussion about life as a pet sitter.
Meghan 00:19
Hello, welcome to episode 298. Hello. So close with 300. Thank you to pet sitters associates and our wonderful Patreon members who support us with the price of a cup of coffee or a little bit more every month. We greatly appreciate you guys.
Collin 00:38
Yeah, we had our recent once a month, zoom, meet up with several of our supporting members, and absolutely had a wonderful time talking about how businesses are going on some of our histories and past experiences. And things that we are doing right now to make our businesses better, was a really good time, I've really grown to appreciate these very much. So if you want to be part of those or just want to support the show, if it's benefited you in any way, you can go to petsitter confessional.com/support.
Meghan 01:06
Way back in episode 64, we gave a list of common client questions and how to answer them if they come up. So today we are breaking down and discussing five steps to answering questions on your feet without freaking out. I think that's a lot of people's fear. That's my fear is oh, I have a question that I don't know the answer to or it's a question that I haven't gotten in a while. So I don't remember how to answer this. But the key here is that everyone is going to answer these questions differently. You're going to answer a differently based on the type of question the client that you're interacting with, or potential client, the mode of communication. And then obviously you you as the business owner, because you run your business different than anybody else in the whole world. So listen, with that in mind that your answers will and should vary from ours and everybody else's.
Collin Funkhouser 01:56
Why should we be so concerned with how we answer questions? I think first and foremost, it's because we're professional, we present ourselves as professional to our communities, to our clients and potential clients. And so we need to be answering questions in a professional and factual way, which means it takes practice. And that's why we're going to dive into this here in a little bit. But answering questions is hard. We recognize that and Megan said that she knows she struggles with this. We know a lot of people struggle with answering questions. Well, some feel like they're not clear in how they answer. Maybe they take too long, or maybe they worry about saying the wrong thing. And so we lock up and stop being able to address the concerns that the client has,
Meghan 02:37
you know, answering questions is like giving an impromptu extemporaneous speech, speech that is based on research and structure, and it's not memorized or read. You are a business with rules and policies and procedures. So the questions you get will need to be answered based on those and obviously your experiences as well. So you have to know your policies, which is surprising not, but you have to know what's in your contract what, what you will and will not do the boundaries that you hold to and hold the firm to and you will not move on these. It can be hard to remember all of these in the spur of the moment, though, when you have so much else going on. We know there's a lot of headache around clients asking questions that you've already answered. Again, like if it's the 15th time, you've had to answer this question, maybe put it on your frequently asked questions page on your website, or your social media or whatever it is, it can be frustrating when clients ask you questions that you've already outlined that you've already reminded them of in your email newsletters. But remember that again, if your contract is 15 pages long, not everyone is going to read the whole thing. And they're not going to do probably not going to do a lot of in depth research on you. Most people just Google dogwalker near me, and they start calling down the list. If you're on Google My Business, they may not even click to your website, they may just start calling you. So take a deep breath. Remember that it could be the first time this person has asked you the question. And so address it from that angle that I am treating this client, this potential client with respect that they deserve. And I am going to answer this in the most professional, honest way that I can.
Collin 04:19
And if they reach out to you via email, text or a direct message, having something like a saved text that reads thank you for contacting us. And with your question, this and many more are addressed on our fact page that you can visit here and then you would insert that link that goes back to your website of your commonly asked questions. What I like about this is that it not only saves you time, but it starts training your clients to be more self sufficient and to check your resources before they reach out to you. You can do this too. And people have questions about like cancellation policies or other procedures that you have. Instead of writing out bespoke messages or taking the time for phone call or a back and forth messaging, copying directly from your policies, or the contract that your client signed. And sending that to them, again, saves you time, and continues to point them back to those good resources that you've already invested a lot of time, energy effort, and possibly money if you worked with a lawyer to draft those. So use those point people back to those. When we answer questions, we have to have certain goals in mind. Obviously, one is to educate them. But I think another one that we need to have, especially as business owners, is to create self sufficient clients, clients that know where to go for resources, that they can come to us for questions, but they can dig into what we've already provided, so that they save time with themselves as well. And they can get those answered more immediately when they go and put in that effort.
Meghan 05:49
Although again, it is tough, because most of the time, it's the first time clients who haven't done any research on us, and they just start asking questions. So you can spend some time periodically reviewing your policies. So obviously, you stay fresh on them. But also you can remind your clients and you know, the looky loos on Facebook, who are stalking you, basically, and just waiting for the time when they're able to use you. I also recommend checking your calendar and staying on top of that as well, especially before Meet and Greet because if they have questions about your availability, you say, you know, are you available next Thursday for to you know, to start visits, or whatever the case may be, you'll want to know, yes, I can or No, I can't, because you as the business owner need to be prepared for all sorts of questions. And we talked about this all the time, you can't be perfect prepared for every scenario. But you do have the resources at your fingertips, and you can practice these things. So that a lot of this becomes second nature.
Collin 06:44
Yeah, you don't have to have a bespoke answer each time someone asks you this same question. So if you get asked, What are your rates, you don't have to craft a message for that particular person in that particular setting. You can respond with what I mentioned earlier of, hey, why don't you check out my fac page on inter my website.com/faq. But basically, it's going to be the same response your rates or your rate, regardless of who asks it. So notice, no need to really get crazy creative with this, you can start to build in some of these scripts that you already have in place that you can use when you get a certain subset of questions.
Meghan 07:20
One thing that is absolutely no question at all is pet care insurance. As pet care professionals, your clients trust you to care for their furry family members, pet sitters Associates is here to help for over 20 years, they've provided 1000s of members with quality pet care insurance. Since you work in the pet care industry, you can take your career to the next level with flexible coverage options, client connections and complete freedom and running your business. Learn why pet sitters Associates is the perfect fit for you and get a free quote today. At pets@llc.com. You can get a discount when joining by clicking membership Pet Sitter confessional and using the discount code confessional at checkout to get $10 off, check out the benefits of membership and insurance once again at pets@llc.com. So we're going to talk about the five things to do to answer questions. Well, and the first one is, listen, which is not that hard. It's not that hard. But it actually is pretty hard. Because we are busy. We are doing 1000 Other things at once you may be walking a dog during this you may be doing a house at you may be grocery shopping, whatever you're doing during this time that you listen to these, but you are doing other things. So our minds tend to wander when we're trying to multitask. So before you answer the phone, or respond to a message from a potential client, make sure you have the time to dedicate to it. You know, walk away from distractions, if you want to answer the phone, but you're watching a TV show, pause the TV show and try to find a quiet spot to just focus on the phone call and what is happening. You know, you're not just listening to the words that somebody says you're if you're on a phone call, you're listening to the tone of of the person, if you are in person, you're reading their body language. And so these types of sometimes nonverbal communication is important and it gives you information about the person and what they're trying to communicate.
Collin Funkhouser 09:07
And I will add that even if you're getting messages and text or direct message or email, there is context surrounding why that person is contacting you. So we are just now coming out of the Fourth of July holiday weekend here in the States. And there were a lot of people that reached out last minute. So people who were reaching out closer and closer to this weekend, were feeling more and more rushed. So even though in an email, it just asks, Do you have availability this weekend? I know some context, I can imply some context around this of this person is probably frantically looking for for care for their pet so I can keep my answers and my responses short and brief and to the point and try and pack information in there. So we don't we have to limit the amount of back and forth this because that's going to annoy this person and I can be more succinct with what I'm trying to say. I'll
Meghan 09:57
say that is a fine line though because you don't want to as soon Boom, especially in text, you can do a lot of assuming we but we don't want to do that too. But if you know it's July 2, and they're calling about or texting about July 4, you can probably safely assume that they are pretty frantic.
Collin 10:13
Because again, all of the contacts and all this extra information gives us a lot to work with about the person what they are actually trying to communicate with us. And sometimes this means that we're actually answering their concern instead of their actual spoken question. A really good example of this is you're at a meet and greet. And the clients voice quivers as they state that their dog is their entire life, and is continually touching, looking for calling for their dog during the visit. Then, as they ask, How long have you been in business, they're nervously petting their dog. So sure, it's probably okay to say something like, I've been in business for five years, and I've loved it. But this person is obviously anxious about leaving their pet, and is probably pretty scared about how they'll be cared for and whether it will be done properly. So a better response here, again, we're addressing their concern, their unspoken concern versus what they communicated with their voice, saying something like, in the five years, I've been in business, I've cared for hundreds of clients, pet first aid and CPR certified and taken additional behavior trainings. And I pride myself on the professionalism that I bring to my business. You're emphasizing and you're pre empting other questions that they may come up with. And you're addressing, again, that unspoken concern that we get when we look at the context, and we listen for some of those other clues. The next
Meghan 11:34
thing to do when you have a client question is pause. And this does two very important things. The first one is, you take a moment to think and collect yourself and you force yourself to breathe in this moment. You know, when we're rushed, we breathe really shallow, we start to run out of air. And as this happens, we panic because we can't breathe. So it's kind of like this vicious cycle, you feel rushed cambree If you panic, and then you panic because you feel rushed. So we speed up in Rushmore and we finished gasping for air wondering what on earth we just said, after we answer a question Is it really super fast, because we haven't listened and we haven't taken the time to pause. So breathing is how we connect with ourselves. By taking two to four seconds, it seems kind of it can seem like a long time, but it's really not two to four seconds, you really become more proactive than reactive. And that is very important. The stillness is what connects us with with what we actually need to be saying. And then the third step here is repeating the question. This can sound a little silly, but it helps you to interpret what the other person is saying. So you repeat the question out loud, you re rephrase it, to address the person's tone of voice, their body language if you're in person. And it can really show an intention to align it shows your good faith and that you are listening to what the person saying you are providing clarity to the situation. And it also gives you more time to think it can be very helpful when the question is unclear or you don't understand what they said or what they're asking. So in the example, how long have you been in business, you may choose to respond with? Are you asking how long my business has been formed? Or how long I've been caring for animals? Because even for Colin and i The answers are different.
Collin Funkhouser 13:15
Yeah. And they are going to appreciate that they have another chance to ask and this will actually save you a lot of time from having to go back and forth, aligning with the person. And this all is a process of you giving your interpretation of the question and asking some good follow up questions when you have additional questions. repeating it is just a way of saying I'm listening. And here's what I think you said that way, they give a chance to say that's not quite what I meant. This is what I was trying to say. It clears out that communication and make sure there's no crosstalk going on and you move through these things faster.
Meghan 13:50
So we have listened, we have paused we have repeated the question. And now we are going to respond honestly, because most of the time your clients can tell when you're not being honest with them or when you're trying to evade a question. You know, this business, we say it all the time, but it's built on trust, we give peace of mind to clients. And so you'll earn your the respect of your clients or potential clients when you tell them the truth, when they say wasn't it $18 for the visit, and you know, it's actually $22 for the visit, or whatever your numbers are. But you'll earn that respect. Before we can be honest with others, we have to be honest with ourselves, we have to understand why we're trying to evade the question. Maybe we feel uncomfortable, maybe we don't actually want to give them the real answer because we don't want to have to answer more questions. But, you know, ask yourself, What are your motivations? When you're honest with someone, you say I respect you, you are important. So right there, they'll know that you are paying attention when they are speaking and vice versa. They will pay attention when you speak. Just think of all the talking heads we see on a daily basis who we know are lying or have lied in the past, and we cannot trust them anymore, you know you have zero respect for them, because they didn't value you enough to speak the truth. So we should treat people better than that. And that starts with telling the truth.
Collin 15:12
And then the last step here is to stop talking. And just like the first step, which was listening, this step may sound simple, but it isn't. Because it's a combination of knowing when you've covered the information. And with watching the other person's body language, during meet and greets, or phone conversations, I've straight up stopped talking almost mid sentence, when I've noticed that the other person is no longer paying attention, whether they've started looking at their phone, or they're here talking in the background, if they're on the phone, or they're futzing with stuff next to them and looking around. They've they've actually stopped listening to me. So why should I keep talking? Now, how do you know when it's enough information? It's an art form really, unfortunately, because you have to balance answering the question. And with anticipating the next one, I tend to get caught up with some sort of script where when somebody asked me one question, I can go ahead and and already link three, or four or five questions together in my response, this can overload the client or the person that's talking to me, they only asked the one question, so I need to trust them enough that if they have follow up questions, they're going to ask that, that of me. Again, this is a part of trusting in this communication, I'm not going to overload them with things because I think they need to know it. Maybe they did read all of my information, and they just need some clarification on one thing, I'm actually insulting them by then going over all this stuff that they haven't asked me yet or didn't need to know.
Meghan 16:43
Well, and that gets back to the assuming part, we should not be assuming what our clients are thinking or feeling or trying to communicate. And that's why the first step the listening is so crucial, because we just want to answer, we don't want to answer more than what they're asking,
Collin Funkhouser 16:59
I think these five steps. And really six steps, if you include the preparation that we talked about earlier of knowing your policies, looking at your calendar and develop things, scripts, and things that you can use on off the fly. Once we've prepared, and we've worked through all of this, what does this do to our conversation, slows it down, this helps us stay in control over it and keep the pace comfortable for us. Which is one of the things that a lot of people struggle with. They feel like they have to respond immediately. So they're rushing through the conversation, they're not thinking through everything, they're not breathing. So they're panicking because they're running out of air. And then they don't know what to stop because they haven't thought through it.
Meghan 17:35
And then a lot of times mistakes are actually made, whether it's the client thinking that they are being rushed, and they just abruptly stopped the conversation, or you are making mistakes, because you haven't thought through what they're actually asking
Collin 17:49
or what your response is going to be. Again, that's why that pausing and breathing is super important. Because that gives us a chance to let our brain catch up and spin through the information and we can start forming a response before we rush into it. And that way, that's where this professionalism comes in. That's where the control that's where the respect and honor for the other person starts coming into play. We are doing our due diligence with the conversation in our part, so that the information is conveyed correctly, succinctly and clearly. To the person who's asking,
Meghan 18:20
how do you answer a common client questions? What tactics do you use to communicate with them? We would love to know you can send us an email at feedback at petsitter confessional.com. Business Coaches, Tasha opionion is going to answer. What does building client loyalty look like? Yeah,
18:36
so that's like two sides of the coin for us in the pet space, because we always find that our new clients are easier to adapt than our old clients. Usually, because we've changed the business around and a little bit more like all of our new clients are on board. It's our old clients who are still you know, not on board. But even if they are on board or not on board, they still stuck it out with you. Right? They've been gone through the changes with you. They've seen you evolve. And guess what, they're still loyal, and they're still coming back. I would say start you know, trying to embed your clients a little bit more by offering them like a brand ambassador program. Hey, Colin, I always see that you're shouting us out on your Instagram. I always see you're talking about us. I would love for you to join our brand ambassador program. Every time you get a referral now instead of giving you 10% We're gonna give you 20% As a brand ambassador, we just ask that you at least post you know one piece of content per week to stay active. Start getting your clients embedded in your process and now they're raving fans in an intentional way. That's the best way to do it. Yeah, and now like for me since I started this more luxury apartments, I know that all my apartments have a portal. Every luxury apartment has an internal portal that you can chat with all the residents in the neighborhood will have you just post one live A flyer about my business, the entire 300 units are gonna see it. So I want to embed my clients by saying, Hey, join our brand ambassador program, all you have to do was just put one post in your client portal per week to stay active. Every time we get a referral from your building an image in your name, you get 20% off your services. So now when they want a discount, well, hey, help me out to help you out. Join our brand ambassador program. Sure, I'd love to give you a discount join our program, perfect way to do that. And that goes a really long way. It's like affiliate marketing. So same thing, if you already love your product, your standby, you use it for yourself, you believe in it well, versus just waiting for someone to ask you and refer now you're being on the offense, and ensuring their referrals,
Collin Funkhouser 20:50
you're making part of them, you're making them part of something bigger, something more beyond themselves and kind of giving them integrating them into the business like you say, oh, and making a little bit sticky, because you're allowing them to talk about something that they love and that you know, they would do probably anyway, it's just a little bit more incentive and trying to grease the skids on that. So it's easier for them to do
21:09
it. Because we know referrals, word referrals is usually if you're just in a casual conversation and someone says, Oh, I'm looking for a pet sitter. Do you know anyone that when they get the referral? It's not like, Oh, I gotta tell you about this person. Or oh, I just signed up with them. When you first sign up say hey, by the way, did you know we also offer referrals like get start getting them in in embedded early, like, hey, and then if you get a referral, you get 10% off like let them know that write it on all of your invoices. Write that on your emails, write it on everything you send them so they know
Meghan 21:45
if you would like to join Natasha's monthly membership group, you can do you so at automated ceo.com and use the code P SC 20. For 15% off we want to
Collin Funkhouser 21:53
thank you so much for listening and thank Pitzer associates for sponsoring today's episode. We hope you've had a wonderful weekend and have a wonderful week. Bye
