Streamline your Client Communications Process

If your agency isn't growing at the rate you expect, it might be time to change the way you work. You may be able relate to recent studies that report how much time employees waste looking for information, wading through emails, multitasking, and performing other productivity-killing activities. In fact, jumping from task to task could reduce productivity by up to 40 percent, notes a study by the American Psychological Association. For agencies, assessing your processes means looking at how you collaborate and share information, both internally and with your clients. Fortunately, with today's technologies, streamlining your processes to improve productivity isn't out of reach. A study by McKinsey Global Institute shows that employees and managers who use social technologies to improve communication and collaboration can improve productivity by 20-25 percent.Let's find out how your agency can overcome these productivity challenges, improve the relationship with your clients and help you achieve your growth goals.

Why streamline client communication?

Time Savings. One of the biggest benefits to having clear, efficient processes is time savings when you are managing the needs of multiple clients. How many times per week do the people involved in your social media efforts have to upload the same content to multiple different platforms, deal with the back and forth of your manual approval process, and then finally recreate that content in your publishing platform? By removing duplication of efforts like this, you can save hours of wasted time each week.Accountability. When a potentially damaging social media post is published with or without client permission, immediately finding the source and assuring the client that it won't happen again may be your only hope for saving the agency-client relationship. With an audit trail built in to your social media approval process, you'll be able to track every action taken by your team, and by your client, so you can both have the confidence necessary to execute your work without worrying about missteps.Better Client Experience. With so many agencies offering the same service yours does, providing an excellent client experience is the primary way you can differentiate yourself from the competition. Keep your clients from jumping ship by providing a frictionless and organized client experience with little learning curve, designed to help you keep everyone in the same page.

The Typical Agency Workflow

In working with scores of agencies, we've found that the typical social media execution workflow prior to joining HeyOrca is fragmented and quite simply broken. Agencies often use multiple tools to plan, share and publish client content.

1. Create a social media content calendar in a spreadsheet.
2. Export that spreadsheet to a PDF, or mock up each post in your publishing platform of choice, and take a screenshot to send to the client.
3. Email the PDF or screenshots to the client, and wait for them to provide you feedback and approval via email.
4. Make edits to the original post based on client feedback.
5. Migrate approved content to the publishing platform and schedule publication.

With so many steps and different tools, this process is riddled with room for human error. An email could get lost, the wrong PDF version sent, or an edit incorrectly entered. Not to mention the fact that any record of client changes and approvals are locked up in an individual's email, or worse, the email of several people working on the account. And you can bet, if something goes wrong, your agency will take the blame.If this sounds familiar to you, we're here to tell you: There's a better way.

How to Streamline Your Communication Workflow

Working with spreadsheets and PDFs might feel comfortable to you now, but if you streamline your communication workflow, you'll find that the process moves along a lot more smoothly.Here's how.

• Unify your processes. Rather than spending time chasing emails, hounding clients for approvals, hunting for the most updated spreadsheet, and updating it in your publishing platform, use one tool to bring everything together. With a platform like HeyOrca, you can plan, visualize, share, edit, approve, schedule and publish content without ever switching programs.
• Manage every client in one place. The one thing that slows down productivity faster than multitasking is having to use multiple tools to multitask. Imagine instead, having every client's assets and content plans in the same place. A simple system designed specifically agency social media work, that offer structure and organization out of the box.
• Organize your team. With different people in your agency handling different accounts, it's likely you have client information, assets and schedules scattered across the organization. By making sure all of your clients' materials and plans are in one place, you'll be able to better manage your different projects, improve collaboration and ensure that nothing falls through the cracks.

So don't wait another minute. Stop moving from tool to tool, trying to put out one fire after another. Streamline your processes and use a single platform to manage every client.