8 Actionable Client Communication Tips and Best Practices

Clients rarely watch you do the work. Instead, they watch how you talk to them about the work, which means that effective client communication isn’t just a soft skill layered on top of the real deliverables.

For agencies, law firms, consulting groups, and other professional services teams, client communication is inseparable from the deliverable.

Here’s a common scenario: A new client signs on. The work is going well enough that there’s nothing urgent to report. Two weeks pass without a word between you. To you, that means everything is under control. But to the client, it might spark concerns that something has gone wrong or that they’ve been deprioritized.

They email you in a bit of a panic, wondering why you haven't been in touch. But nothing in the subject line tips you off, so it sits in your shared inbox like anything else, and you assume it can wait.

And for a couple more days, the new client’s frustration grows. 

Nobody did anything wrong, exactly. It’s just that expectations weren’t communicated clearly and bad assumptions were made. It’s the kind of thing every professional services team faces at some point. 

Below, you'll find eight client communication best practices that will help you avoid issues like this and others. Some are mindset shifts; others are about building the right systems and processes. Whatever your communication protocols look like today, I’m confident you’ll find at least a few ways to improve. 

1. Set expectations at the start of the client relationship

Communication problems with a client usually start because no one makes time to talk about communication. Ironic, right?

Don’t worry, this isn’t an exercise in finding your client’s love language, but there’s a solid reason that the love languages concept caught on outside of couples therapy: most people can’t actually name what they need.

Poor communication lies at the base of many relationship issues and many client issues, and it usually isn’t anyone’s fault. To prevent it, someone has to get explicit about expectations around what good communication looks like.

Communicate how and when to communicate

Most firms default to saying "contact us anytime," which sounds accommodating. But what does that actually mean? You probably aren’t answering the phone at 10 p.m. on a Saturday night, so that statement isn’t much help.

Different situations require different communication channels. If you don't outline those for the client, they’ll guess — and everyone will probably guess differently. 

A quick document approval might be fine over email, but a change to scope probably needs a phone call to talk through why the changes are necessary. An urgent, time-sensitive issue needs a live channel you're actually watching in real-time, not an inbox you check once a day.

To avoid client communication issues, tell clients how to contact you for the most common types of issues and questions they’re likely to have. 

Stay in touch when things are going right

If a client hasn't heard from you in two weeks, is that normal? Or should they be worried? Just like in the example in the introduction, they’ll only know the answer to that if you’ve told them.

A simple statement like, "I’ll check in every other Friday, even if there's nothing new to report" removes the guesswork entirely, and it costs you almost nothing. It can even be a prescheduled automated email draft where you simply tweak the details and hit send.

2. Use objective language

In my own experience, the biggest communication problems are almost always due to the use of subjective language in previous communications. I’ll give you an example:

A few years back, I had an Airbnb booked for a month-long stay in the Yucatan. From the moment of arrival, everything went wrong. The community was gated and manned, and the guard was never informed we’d be coming. He spoke no English, and the two years of Spanish I took back in 2002 were certainly not proving useful. 

It took over an hour to get in contact with the host just so we could get inside, where we discovered it was dirty, moldy, and not somewhere I even wanted to sit, let alone sleep for a month.

I reached out to Airbnb’s chat support for their help since the host became unresponsive once we were inside the place. I told them I wanted to be moved to a different place, and that I’d like to resolve the whole thing before I bothered unpacking. 

The chat agent told me they needed to escalate my case to the appropriate department, who would “be in touch soon.”

Considering the situation, and that this was a chat based conversation, I assumed that “soon” meant a few minutes. A couple of hours, tops. So I didn’t unpack. I’ll save you the rest of the drama, but in the end it took three follow ups from me and two weeks before Airbnb ever got back in touch.

In retrospect, I should have asked them to define what “soon” meant, but it’s in the past and I wouldn’t have a story to tell you if I’d done that.

The point is that to the Airbnb agent — sitting there comfortably at their desk, going home to their own bed every night — “soon” may have meant 14 days. To me — not wanting to sleep under the covers because I was worried I’d get bitten by bed bugs — “soon” meant before the end of the day. 

Airbnb didn’t really do anything “wrong” in this interaction. But the subjective nature of the language used and the long timeline created a lot of extra stress for me. 

Words like "soon," "shortly," "ASAP," "as needed," and "regularly" are commonly used to “communicate well,” but they’re actually the equivalent of wrapping up empty boxes to put under the Christmas tree. They look like you’ve done the job without actually delivering a gift.

The fix here is to swap subjective language for objective language:

• If you expect it to take two weeks to get back in touch, then say so.

• If you’ll have an answer the same day, let them know.

• When you’re replying to someone, ask yourself, “What specifically do each of these things mean?” If you find yourself using a word that doesn’t have an objective definition attached, either don’t use it or define it for the client.

Vague words feel nicer, but they really aren’t

People often default to using vague words when trying to be nice.

“We’ll be in touch soon” sounds nicer than “We’ll be in touch within two weeks.” And that’s because most people don’t think of two weeks as “soon” when they’re asking for help.

But there’s one big lesson I’ve learned from my own experience on both sides of client service communications: Precision provides the opportunity for a win. 

Say “within two weeks” and reply in one, and you’ve delighted the client. 

Reply in exactly two weeks, and you’ve still kept your word. 

Give them a vague timeline like “soon” and you never get a win, because nobody was tracking against a real number to begin with.

If you’re defaulting to vague language because you’re worried the real timeline will get pushback, that’s a signal that either your processes need to improve or your client doesn’t have enough information. 

In my experience, providing clients with a little more context often works like magic: “Thanks for sending over the expense receipts. I see there’s 95 of them. We process these by hand in the name of accuracy, so it’ll take a bit of time. I should be back in touch within two weeks. I appreciate your patience.” 

Does it take longer to say this than “We’ll be in touch soon”? Sure. But you’re unlikely to get hounded with follow-up emails, giving you more time to actually process those receipts.

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3. Lead with empathy and remember that clients aren't experts in your field

Professional services are highly specialized, knowledge-based occupations. As an attorney, accountant, architect, recruiter, or marketer, you have more knowledge of your industry than most people can even fathom exists about a single topic. 

If your clients had the same knowledge as you, they wouldn’t have hired you.

That certainly sounds obvious, but in practice, we all have a habit of assuming that someone’s knowledge level is higher than it is. It's easy to slip into explaining something the way you'd explain it to a colleague or using the shorthand your whole industry runs on, then feel mildly irritated when the client asks a question that already had an answer in the email you sent.

The client isn’t being difficult (usually). It’s just that they don’t speak the language you’ve spent years or decades living in.

Treat every new client like they're starting from zero without making them feel talked down to. This requires a combination of empathy and simplifying language. It also often means explaining the why, not just the what.

"I need your Q3 receipts by Friday," comes off as a demand.

"I need your third quarter receipts by Friday so we have time to process them by the deadline for closing the quarter’s books” is the same instruction, but provides the context to understand the importance of the request.

When you're the bearer of bad news

English-speakers are famously indirect when it comes to delivering bad news. Think of all the different ways there are to announce the death of a loved one. Even if we’re just talking about the family goldfish, we rarely say outright that “she died” (I almost feel uncomfortable even typing it).

We wrap perceived negatives in softeners and “read between the lines” verbiage, which is exactly how a client ends up confused about how bad a situation actually is.

We do this because somewhere along the way, we were taught that being empathetic means softening the blow. But it doesn’t. Bad news needs to be delivered as clearly and directly as any other piece of information. 

Just add some empathy. Usually, this is best done through your actual tone of voice, which requires a phone call at minimum.

Let’s say a staff member is fired and angrily wipes a client record from the database before you can revoke their access. You can’t recover the files, so the only option is to recreate the record. 

How do you proceed?

• Inform the client immediately.

• Take ownership and apologize.

• Show empathy.

• Offer help that’s a bit outside the norm.

Did you personally wipe the file? No. But your firm hired the staff member and is therefore responsible. 

Say something like: “I’m very sorry this happened. I know this creates stress for you and might hurt your trust in us, but I hope for the opportunity to rebuild it. On my end, I’m going to take the following steps to attempt to recreate as much of the file as possible so the project stays on track.” Then, list your personal next steps and the client's next steps.

A University of Houston study found that professionals who admit they were wrong are rated as more trustworthy, competent, and effective. Hiding a mistake and having a client discover it themselves costs far more trust than owning it upfront ever would.

4. Match the communication channel to the message

Different types of communication do best on different channels. Defaulting to whichever channel is easiest for your firm (usually email because it's async and doesn't interrupt your day) means the channel is chosen based on your convenience, not your customer’s needs or your message’s contents.

Here’s a quick guideline that’s served me well in my own business:

• A quick status update or a document approval is fine over email or chat. It's low-stakes, doesn't need real-time back-and-forth, and having it in writing is useful later.

• A negotiation, a potential change to scope, or anything where tone matters needs a real-time conversation so nuance doesn't get lost and neither side is left reading between the lines.

• Anything that needs a paper trail belongs in writing, regardless of how the conversation happened. This includes a scope change, major decisions, and contract details. Discussing these things live is usually best, then following up with an email summary to document the details.

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Know when to stop typing and pick up the phone

Some email threads get worse the longer they go. Scope disputes, escalations, and anything where frustration begins creeping in means things will start to fall apart if you stick to a written channel.

In those moments, a five-minute call usually resolves what a ten-email thread over three days can’t.

If you're three replies deep without actually resolving anything — or if a message reads sharper than you'd expect from that client — that's your signal to stop typing and call. It rarely feels like the fast option at the moment, but it almost always results in the least amount of total time expended resolving a communication breakdown.

5. Build an inbox structure that scales past your first few clients

There's no single right way to structure a support inbox. The best structure depends on how your business actually organizes work, and that looks different across different professional services teams.

But it’s a sure bet that you’ll always want to create clarity around who (an individual or a team) owns a conversation. 

In my university days, I worked as a legal assistant for a few semesters. It was a very small practice with one attorney who practiced one type of law. There was one paralegal and myself. The fees were a percentage based on the amount of the winnings for clients, so the attorney was highly selective in the cases he was willing to take on. We never had more than a dozen or so clients at once.

If I were setting up their correspondence today, I’d probably structure inboxes by correspondence type.

For example, I owned everything related to client medical bills. I needed to request them from the client, process them when they came in, and keep a summary record of them updated for the attorney. “Medical bills” would definitely have been one of our inboxes, and my colleague would have been able to confidently leave that whole inbox to me. 

A staffing or recruiting firm might organize their inbox around open roles or clients. A high-volume business, like a bookkeeping firm serving 500 clients, might find the best structure to be by function (taxes, expense reporting, new client onboarding) or by client type (individual, sole-proprietorship, or corporation) or by client value.

Help Scout’s company management feature is a really good example of how to do this well. Every contact and conversation tied to an account is cleanly connected, so everyone on your team can see which contacts have reached out, what’s in progress, and what's already been discussed.

Tags and custom fields allow you to layer in what's unique to your business. A law firm wanting to organize by case type can use a custom field for that, then can create automated workflows based off that field. A staffing firm might use tags as a lightweight way to organize conversations based on the role type. 

Taken together, it’s a hundred times easier to build out a great shared inbox in something like Help Scout than to continually dig through a basic Gmail inbox with a million labels.

6. Use intelligent conversation routing and workflows

Even a well-structured shared inbox breaks down if conversations still depend on someone remembering to check them. The fix for this isn't more discipline. It's making the system carry that weight.

Smart conversation routing automatically assigns unassigned conversations to available teammates, either by round robin or balanced by current workloads. That means nothing sits waiting for someone to notice it, enabling faster response times to your clients. 

Automatic workflows handle the rest: if a conversation matches a condition, it triggers an action.

Maybe a conversation was assigned to Stacy. After some back and forth, it’s turned into a refund request, so she adds a “refund request” tag. Refund requests are all handled by Amber, so by adding the appropriate tag, your workflow is triggered and the conversation automatically reassigns to Amber.

This is particularly useful if your business is big enough that Stacy has no idea who Amber is; Stacy simply knows that someone else handles refund requests. She doesn’t need to remember who; she only needs to add the tag, and the conversation moves on.

The same mechanism protects you when you have retainer clients with contractual response-time commitments. A workflow that escalates any conversation approaching its response-time goal means you lower the risk of missing those targets.

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7. Keep client history somewhere that isn’t one person's memory

My grandfather was a salesman back in the time when being a salesman really meant something. I’m talking about the Dale Carnegie breed of salesman. He was wildly successful at it because the man was great at building relationships. 

He could make life-long friends in the time it took to ride up to his floor in a hotel elevator.

Back then, sales was mostly done in person. If you worked routes like he did, you were the only real point of contact that a client had with a business. Each individual salesman held the context that went with the account: their most-ordered products, favorite sports teams, children’s names, and beloved local lunch spots.

He told me one of the things that made him particularly successful in the early days was writing everything down in the Rolodex that lived in his car. When he’d get to a stop on his route, he’d quickly skim through their client card as a refresher. Then he’d go inside and connect with them about their lives before getting down to business.

Most of us aren’t using a Rolodex anymore, but we should be building digital systems that do the same thing.

If everything about every client lives in Stacy’s head, what happens if she goes on vacation, gets sick, or leaves the firm?

To avoid these headaches, build out customer profiles that capture this important context. Whether it’s a custom field with their birthday or a general note about their favorite sports team, a centralized customer profile means anyone who communicates with that client can benefit from the information.

8. Ask for feedback, then actually use it

My final tip for improving your client communications is to ask for short, specific feedback tied to actual client interactions. This specific feedback is far more useful than an annual or quarterly survey, and it’s far more likely to get answered by the client.

One example of this is Help Scout's satisfaction ratings. They appear directly below every email reply your team sends. A client can then rate the specific response — not the relationship in its entirety — with one click.

A client can tell you a reply felt dismissive while the moment's still fresh, instead of trying to reconstruct the feeling three months later on a survey that asks about "overall satisfaction."

Close the loop on feedback

If a client's feedback actually changed something, tell them: "You mentioned wanting more detail in our updates, so we've added a summary section to each one.” 

It’s a simple follow up that takes one minute to send, yet it makes every future piece of feedback from that client feel like it’s more valuable. 

Feedback you heard and aren't implementing needs the same closure. A client who suggests something that doesn't fit your process, your capacity, or your pricing still needs to know they were heard if you expect them to provide more feedback in the future:

"We looked into weekly calls instead of biweekly, and given the scope of this engagement, biweekly is going to serve you better. Here's why…" 

The biggest thing that stops clients from giving feedback isn't hearing no. It's feeling ignored.

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The best client communication is the kind clients stop noticing

That panicked email from the introduction to this article doesn't have to happen.

With a defined check-in cadence, two weeks of quiet reads as normal instead of ominous. With clear guidance on what counts as urgent, a client isn't left hoping a vague subject line does the work of saying "this can't wait." If something did go wrong along the way, a plainly delivered update and an apology that shows real empathy and ownership will do more to repair the relationship than a carefully worded explanation ever could.

If you implement these client communication best practices, you might be surprised at how few communication issues pop up. That's the actual measure of success: not how often you're in touch, but how rarely a client has to wonder.