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Coffee Chat Take 14: When Being Helpful Becomes the Expectation · Online Business Tips: Mind Your Time

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_00: There's a phrase I find myself saying all the time.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: It's help me help you.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: Let me give you a little context about where that came from.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: So over the years that I've been in business, especially when I was a virtual assistant, I will have clients move forward with working with me with no hesitation.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: They would sign their contract, they would pay their invoice right away.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: But then it was time for them to give me what I needed to actually do the work.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: So that was their login information, access to their tech stack, different documents, but they would disappear.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: And this left me baffled and frustrated because I was ready to go to work, but I didn't have what I needed to help them.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: So that's when I started saying, help me help you.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: Now back then I was thinking about what I needed from my clients so I could do my job well.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: But there's also another side to that phrase.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes in our efforts to make things easier for our clients, we start giving them too much access instead of creating an experience that helps them know where to find what they need, what they're responsible for, and what happens next in our process.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: This usually happens because we really want our clients to know that they made the right decision when they chose to work with us.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: So when they have a question, we answer it.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: When they need something, we send it.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: If they're confused, we step in and we clear things up.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes we do a little more than we originally planned because we're just being helpful.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: And I say that in air quotes.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: And there's absolutely nothing wrong with being helpful.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: The problem is that being helpful can slowly turn into an expectation.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: And there usually isn't one big thing that makes this happen.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: When I talk to business owners during their client communication reset sessions, there are usually a number of small things that are happening, often because they didn't have a solid onboarding process in place.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_00: Nothing necessarily feels wrong.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: The client is getting what they need and the work is getting done.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: But at the same time, you're teaching your clients how to interact with you and you're showing them how your business operates, and it's not operating efficiently.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: So what happens?
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: Well, your clients learn that when they have a question, they can just ask you.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: They learn that if they aren't sure about what happens next, they can just reach out and you're going to tell them, even though you've already sent that email that they've never read multiple times.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: They also learn that when they need information, the easiest place to get it from is guess who?
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: You.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: Now that doesn't mean they're demanding or they expect too much from you.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: They're simply engaging with you based on the experience that you've provided and you've created those expectations.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I've had to recognize this in my own business too.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not immune.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_00: There have been plenty of times when I've answered a question because it was easier than pointing someone back to the information I had already provided, or I just handled something myself because it was just quicker for me to do it.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: Now, in the moment, that feels like good client service.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: You're doing your job.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: But this is what I found out.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: Every time I did that, I was reinforcing where my clients should go when they needed something.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: And that was to me.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_00: Now I think that's the part that's really easy to miss because we usually look at availability from one side.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: We notice how often we're checking our email, how quick quickly we're responding, or how many questions we're answering, even if it's the same ones over and over again.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_00: But I want you to try something different.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: Look at this from your client side for it just a minute and ask yourself this question.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_00: What have my clients learned to expect from me?
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: Because I keep doing it.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: Because expectations aren't only created by what we tell people, they're actually mostly created by how we interact with them.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: So if you respond to messages outside of your office hours, that becomes part of the experience.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what they expect.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: If you're always explaining what happens next, they learn to just wait for you to explain it instead of reading what you sent them.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: And if you automatically send every reminder and update manually yourself, they learn that you're where those reminders and updates are going to come from all the time.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: So after a while, something that you started doing because you wanted to be helpful becomes something the client believes is simply part of the experience of working with you.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_00: And when you genuinely care about your clients, like I know you do, it can be easy to confuse being accessible with needing to be available for everything.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_00: But taking good care of your clients and making yourself available for everything, they're not the same.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes taking better care of your clients isn't about being more available.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: It's really about looking at where your client communication may be making you more required than you need to be.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_00: So if this is starting to make you think about other places where your business may depend on you more than you realize, I created a free five-day email experience called Make Your Business Need Less of You in Five Days.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: Each day, I'm going to help you look at one area of your business and make one small practical change because you don't need to try to fix everything at once.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: And you can grab the link in the show notes and join me for that.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: But for now, I don't want you to go through your business trying to pick out all the flaws or change anything.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_00: I just want you to simply notice what's happening.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_00: Notice the questions that keep coming directly to you, the updates that you automatically send manually yourself, the places where you keep stepping in because it feels easier, and the things your clients wait for, you tell them what they need.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: Now then go back to that question.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_00: What have my clients learned to expect from me because I keep doing it?
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: Because sometimes the first sign that good client service depends too much on you, it isn't an unhappy client.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: It's really a client who is perfectly happy with you giving them open access.