How to Automate and Personalize Your Client Experience Using Dubsado
As a service provider whose calendar is quickly filling to the brim, it’s imperative to find ways to free up space so that you can feel less stressed and overwhelmed, plus have more time to take care of your clients.
THE KEY METHOD OF GETTING BACK AS MUCH TIME AS POSSIBLE IS AUTOMATION.
Automation, quite simply, is when you put certain tasks or processes on autopilot in your business. (Personally, any and everything that’s able to be automated, we automate it.) These tasks either completely run on their own, or they require extremely little effort from you to make it happen.
Dubsado is the tool that we love the most for all things entailed with running a service-based business but especially for automation. However, the one negative assumption many people have with automating is the fear of it seeming too robotic to your clients. After all, client experience is the most important aspect of a service-based business for multiple reasons. So in this post, we’ll be walking you through how to automate and personalize your client experience using Dubsado!
How to Get Set Up with Dubsado Workflows
In order to personalize your automated process, you first have to learn how the heck to automate with Dubsado using Workflows. Dubsado’s Workflows feature is the central hub you’ll be using to create various workflow templates that you can then apply to projects either manually or automatically after being triggered by something. We’ve already written an in-depth tutorial on how to create and use Workflows in Dubsado with some extra advice and tips, but we’ll give you the ten thousand-foot view in two main steps.
UNDERSTAND YOUR MANUAL PROCESS IN DUBSADO
Before you can turn your process into a workflow, you first need to understand how it works manually in Dubsado. We recommend using a throwaway email to go through your process as both the client and service provider, so you can get insight into what it looks like on both sides. Send forms, emails, active and log into the client portal, sign your contract, book a call, run through all of the steps manually that both you and the client would need to do. You can even manually apply a payment to an invoice without actually paying.
INSERT YOUR STEPS INTO A WORKFLOW
Once you know and understand how Dubsado functions as it relates to manually completing all the steps in your process, you can turn it into a Workflow. Dubsado makes creating workflows super easy. You have a few ways to start a workflow, and a whole lot of actions and action trigger combinations you can use to really make your workflow work for your business.
Workflows can be started by:
A lead capture form being completed - You can select a default workflow that everyone who completes a lead capture form will be added to automatically.
A workflow element being used in a lead capture form - With this element, you can add a dropdown menu question to your form where each answer maps to a specific workflow. A great way to use this is, if you offer multiple packages that all have a different process, you can map each package answer to its specific workflow for someone to automatically be added to.
Manually applying a workflow to a project - You can always visit the Workflows tab inside a project and manually apply a workflow to them.
From there, you have a plethora of different actions, like:
Change a project status
Add a tag
Send email
Send form
Create todo
Send contract
Send primary invoice
Create invoice
Active/deactive client portal
Send appointment scheduler
Archive a project, and more!
You can choose when and how those actions perform, whether it’s immediately, after a certain amount of time has passed, after a form is or isn’t completed, the list goes on. Again, be sure to check out this blog post all about workflows for a full breakdown of how to create yours.
How to Add Personalization to Your Automated Processes
A lot of people think that by automating, it means you lose the “human” feel of your process, and therefore decrease the value and quality of your client experience. That simply just isn’t the case. We agree that adding as much personalization to your processes as possible is, in general, so important for connecting with your clients and showing them that you really care about them. After all, the client experience essentially boils down to how you make your clients feel.
However, that possibility of personalization doesn’t disappear just because of automation, and there are several ways— both big and small— that you can fit it into your automated processes in Dubsado.
USE SMART FIELDS IN YOUR CANNED EMAILS AND FORMS
Canned emails are email templates that you can use in Workflows or send one-off to clients. Dubsado gives you multiple default canned emails from the jump, but you have the ability to create more or edit the ones they provide you. They also have an amazing form builder that allows you to create fully branded, beautiful proposals, questionnaires, contracts, lead capture forms, and subcontracts.
Smart fields are text fields you can use that will automatically input the appropriate information into the field. For example, the {{client.firstName}} smart field will insert the client’s first name for you. There are over 60 smart field options available in multiple categories, including:
Project smart fields
Client smart fields
Invoice smart fields
Business smart fields
Date smart fields
Link smart fields
Package smart fields
Appointment smart fields
Form smart fields, and
Payment plan smart fields
You have tons of opportunities to use smart fields to add whatever sort of information you want to automatically field into your canned emails and questionnaires, contracts, and proposals when they send off to clients.
EDIT CANNED EMAILS IN WORKFLOWS BEFORE THEY SEND OFF
In Dubsado, you can add canned emails to your Workflows that will send off to your clients. However, just because they’re in a Workflow doesn’t mean that they’ll send off automatically without your eyeballs ever being able to see them again or make changes.
Dubsado allows you to mark actions in your Workflow to require approval before they send off. (This is important for more than just emails, but we’ll get to that next.) This means that you’ll be able to go inside the client’s Workflow and edit an email quickly to add some more personalization before you approve the action, which will then trigger it to send.
For instance, when you finish up a discovery call with a client and are sending over their proposal in an email, you have the opportunity to edit the email and touch on specific points you talked about during the call before it sends.
We recommend creating a todo action step before the email to remind yourself to edit the specific client’s email. Remember those smart fields we talked about? You can use them in your todo names as well, so you can have a specific task on your list in Dubsado to “Edit [client name]’s follow up email,” for example. This way you won’t be left wondering about and then searching for whose email you need to edit when the task pops up on your list.
RECORD PERSONALIZED VIDEOS TO WELCOME NEW CLIENTS
If you have something like a welcome email, an onboarding guide, a new client checklist, or any asset that has the purpose of welcoming the client once they’ve paid their invoice, record a personalized video just for them! The videos don’t have to be any longer than 1-2 minutes, and it can simply just be stating how excited you are to start working with them, how grateful you are that they picked you as their expert, and how you can’t wait to get them results. Be sure to use their name in the video to drive home the feeling of individuality in your roster of clients.
Taking not even 30 minutes out of your day to record these videos for your new clients may not seem like much to you in terms of creation, but they really make a big impact and leave a lasting impression on your clients. You know that approval button in workflows? You can add an approval step before a form sends off as well, so you can easily pop into the form and upload the video before approving and sending.
USE CUSTOM MAPPED FIELDS TO SEND BIRTHDAY GIFTS OR MESSAGES
Mapped fields in Dubsado are information that is specific to the client or project. Dubsado allows you to create client and project custom mapped fields, so you can collect and track information of your choosing. That information will show on the project’s dashboard, so you can find it with a quick glance. For example, a wedding planner may create a project mapped field to collect the client’s wedding date. A social media manager may create a client mapped field for the client’s social media handle.
An easy but impactful way to use custom mapped fields that would apply for almost any business would be a client mapped field to collect their birthday. From there, you could create an action in your offboarding workflow to send an email on the client’s birthday wishing them well or even a $5 gift card to Amazon or their favorite coffee shop. Or if email isn’t your primary means of communication, you could instead create a todo to remind you to reach out to them in some way.
USE QUESTIONNAIRES TO GET TO KNOW THEM
We know many service providers use some kind of intake or onboarding questionnaire to get important information from their brand new paying client. Amidst those questions, try including questions about their interests, what they like to do in their free time, if they’re a Coke or Pepsi person, their Enneagram type, etc.
Get to know the fun and quirky side of them, so you can connect with them as a person beyond just a client. They’ll appreciate that you care to want to know these little things about them and their personalities. And because this form is in your Workflow, it takes little no effort from you. Just take 10 minutes to add the questions to your form template, and you won’t have to think about it again.
Aside from just personalizing your client experience, if you’re a service provider who publishes blog posts about your projects, like a photographer or planner, you can even include these fun details when sharing about your clients.
And there you have it! Remember that automation doesn’t mean that you can’t still personalize your client experience. You can still connect with your clients and make them feel special even when having your entire client processes on autopilot. All it takes is very little effort where possible and a tool like Dubsado to make the process easy and streamlined.
If you’re ready to take Dubsado for a spin to craft an exceptional, personalized experience for your clients, you can learn more about what it can do and even save 30% on your first month or year right over here.
