Your Services are NOT too Custom for SYSTEMS (hear me out)

If you're doing all the things and your business still feels messy, this one's for you.

I hear it all the time: my services are too custom to systematize. And I get it, because parts of your work really are custom. But there's still a baseline every client should move through, and that's the part most people never map.

In this episode I talk about:

• Why "too custom" is usually a mapping problem
• What we actually do on the strategy call when we map your client journey
• Why I ask you why so much, and why it's not a critique
• What to look at before you blame your CRM

The work is on the front end. Do it and everything after connects.

🎙️ABOUT THE HOST

Hi, I'm Kenniqua Lewter, Client Experience Systems Strategist, HoneyBook Educator, and the host of the Systems Rehab Podcast. I help service providers create client experience systems that save time, strengthen client relationships, and build a business that runs with ease. 

➡️WAYS WE CAN WORK TOGETHER

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Let's keep the conversation going. Send me a DM on Instagram or Threads @kenniqua.lewter

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Transcript

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Kenniqua Lewter (00:00)

if you've been managing your clients and you feel like you're doing all the things, but everything still just feels really messy. You feel disorganized. You feel burnt out and overwhelmed. I just wanted to go over a couple of reasons why.

this could be happening for you.

one of the things that

we do when we work with our clients. So when we go through, we build out the CRM system. one of the first things that I do is that I go through, we map out, we do a 90 minute strategy call, and we map out the client journey. This is so important because this allows for me and the client to collab in a visual way. So we do this all visually.

where they can see exactly these are, this is the process of how the clients are coming to us. What's the next step? What happens next? And during each part of the client journey, I'm asking questions Number one, I always let them know that when we're building out the client journey, we want to build this out for the thing that we want majority of our clients to do.

I think sometimes what we do is that we say that our services, that they're so custom that we can't build out an actual automation or we can't streamline it or we can't build out templates because our services are so custom. And though you may have certain parts of your services custom depending on what exactly that you do, but there should be some type of baseline that all of your clients go through to kind of keep that same client experience

throughout your exact process, right? And you can still create templates. So like if you have a custom package, you can create a template where maybe your contract overall says the same thing and there may be like little tweaks that you have to make before sending out the contract or maybe you have to put in a little bit of more information about the pricing because maybe it's a custom price, but the base of your offer is still around about the same.

But when we're going through and we're mapping it out, we're keeping everything, we're building out for the most part of what we want 85 % of our clients to do. Now there is going to be times and of course we build in follow ups. We build in these extra touch points that are very important to keep the client retention through the process.

But overall, what we wanna do is make sure that we can keep majority of our clients on this one baseline, right? On this one baseline. So what I mean by that is like, I've worked with clients in the past that they're like, okay, clients come to me, let's say they're a photographer or something like that. Clients wanna work for me and they send me a text message. But if you have some clients that send out a text message and then other clients that will go to the website and fill out the form, how can we make it where we get

90 plus percent, if not all, to actually fill out the contact form and go through the process versus sending you a text message. Right. And so that's what we build out the client journey for. But the next thing I always have to go through and tell clients is that as we're going through and we're building this out, we're doing this strategy call is that I'm going to ask you a lot of questions and I'm going to question some of the things that you say. Like I'm going to ask you why.

I'm one of those people that I just want to know why, not because it's I'm being rude or I'm being mean about it, or it's not good enough. It's none of that. So I always have to let them know. Like I'm going to question what you say as far as why are you doing it this way? Just because if you tell me the why, then I can go through and I can say, okay, being that I know why you want to do this,

the way that you're doing it, the way you might've been doing this process, maybe it's manual, I have a solution for you that we can automate it and it's still ultimately going to resolve this issue in this particular part, right? So I've resolved your why and I've just put it into a container where it's like, I can automate this because now I know why you're actually doing it or I know the end result of it. So if there's a better way to go through and do it.

this is why I'm asking why. So I always let them know that. Like I'm not trying to say like, you're not doing it good or anything like that because we're all doing things at the level of what we know and have the information for at that time. And that's all that we can do, right? That's all that we can do. And so I'm always questioning them as far as why. Asking those questions because as the system strategist, that's my job to try to do, number one, that's my job.

to try to go through and automate as much as your process is possible. So you can go through, you can start saving more hours, you can start getting that admin work off of your plate because most of the clients that come to me, they come to me because they want to be able to just do what they love doing in their business. And normally that's the work that they did. So if they're a photographer, that's what they wanna do. They're an event decorator, that's what they wanna do.

They are like, have a client that has like a dog concierge. That's what she wants to do. She's out taking care of dogs and cats. She does not want to go through and work on the admin stuff. Right? So those are the things that you really want to focus on. Like really think about, okay, if I'm using something, a tool right now, and I feel like this tool isn't working. Am I using it to his highest capabilities? And then actually number one, have I actually created my process?

Have I actually wrote it down? Have I actually visually mapped this out? Do I know what this process is? Have I actually gone through and thought about these things? And what are my goals for this process?

So if you've been struggling, like again, trying to go through, you're trying to figure out, okay, I've been using some type of client management system, but it does not seem to be working for me, I really want you to go through and just consider that. Just consider maybe as a little bit more work that I have to do on the front end. And when I do that work on the front end, it's going to bring me clarity of how I can go through and connect the dots.