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More than 60% of customers expect agencies to meet all their needs, and 61% of clients would leave for a competitor after just one negative customer experience. These statistics prove that customer experience is the name of the game when it comes to running a successful agency.
Make them happy, and you’ll prosper. Upset them, and they’ll flock to your competitors — along with their hard-earned money. The best way to keep clients satisfied is by efficiently managing your client relationships throughout the sales funnel and beyond.
You can do this by investing in a client tracker. In this guide, we’ll explain everything you need to know about client trackers, including the benefits and features you should look for.
What is a client tracker?
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A client tracker is a tool or software that stores all important client information in one place. This customer data includes but is not limited to:
Emails and calls
Demos
Docs and files
Excel spreadsheets and Excel templates
Contact information
Sales funnel stage
You can think of a client tracker as a database or a customer relationship management (CRM) platform. It’s a central location to store and access essential client information. With all of this information in one convenient location, it’s easier for marketing, sales, and customer success teams to engage.
When everyone is on the same page, the customer gets the attention they need and deserve. Ultimately, using a client tracker can help boost your agency’s service quality and customer satisfaction.
For example, let’s say you’re not using a client tracker. You’re interacting with your clients mostly through email and Microsoft Excel. Every day, you receive dozens of emails, and a very important follow-up email falls through the cracks.
Days turn into weeks, and suddenly, you receive tons of emails from a frustrated customer who’s been asking for your availability for a crucial meeting. Humans make mistakes, and mishaps like this happen all the time.
With a client tracker, any small business can stay on top of all client developments and deliver the best service possible and improve their lead management as well.
Benefits of using a client tracker
Using a client tracker can deliver several advantages to any agency, including:
Enhanced client relationship management: One of the instant benefits of using a client tracker is enhanced client relationship management. By keeping tabs on your clients through every stage of your sales funnel, your sales teams can quickly attend to their needs and requests. Client trackers leverage technologies like artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning to send notifications, deliver updates, and automate workflows, making it easier to keep clients engaged and happy long term.
Improved client communication: Another benefit of client tracking software is communicating with clients in real time. Responding to clients immediately is the key to delivering a white glove service. When people feel like you value their business, they’re more likely to extend their business relationship. For example, waiting too long to start onboarding new clients can result in churn. Churn, or customer attrition, is the percentage of customers who stop using a product or service. If you want to reduce churn, you’ll need to interact with your audience as quickly as possible.
Customized client experience: Personalization isn’t just a marketing buzzword. Research shows that 71% of customers expect agencies to deliver personalized experiences. This makes sense, as customers may purchase the same service from you, but their needs and goals can be very different. Let’s say you’re providing fractional CFO services. Two clients have purchased a monthly service, but they have different requirements. One client wants to reduce their tax burden, while the other is navigating a future expansion. Using a client tracker enables you to segment both clients and deliver what each of them needs.
Efficient task management: Effective client management and communication guide efficient project management. If you can unify communications and objectives across your entire client roster, you can facilitate more effective project management operations.
Essential features to look for in a client tracker
Now that you’re familiar with the benefits of using a client tracker, let’s go over some essential features a quality solution should have.
1. Robust client access
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Great client trackers don’t create silos of clients and agencies. In fact, the best solutions offer robust client access. When choosing a client tracker, you should only invest in a product that allows users to bring their clients into the system.
Collaborating with customers and freelancers inside a client tracker is essential for projects that require their approval. For example, if your marketing team is creating an e-book for a client, giving their subject matter experts (SMEs) access can simplify the revision process.
Teamwork.com gives clients complete access to the platform for simplified collaboration, greater visibility, and an enhanced customer experience.
2. Task and resource management
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Client trackers aren’t just for communication. They should also facilitate the completion of tasks for dozens of client projects at a time. A great client tracker makes it possible to see where every client’s project stands so nothing falls through the cracks.
On top of that, a client tracker also should serve as a resource management tool. With this tool, you don’t have to search through your email or Google Sheets to find important files, contracts, and documents. The client tracker should have all these resources located in a central and secure location.
Client trackers give agencies the ability to see work challenges before they arise. You can even use a client tracker to manage your team’s day-to-day activities and get a clear picture of where most of your time is going.
3. Time tracking and invoicing
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If your agency charges by the hour, it’s essential to make sure all billable hours are recorded and accounted for. A client tracker gives you direct insights into how much time you give each client.
Whether you want to develop more efficient workflows for assisting clients or figure out who your most profitable clients are, a client tracker can help. In addition, a client tracker makes it easier to stay on top of invoices and keep a healthy cash flow.
4. Automated workflows
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With technologies like AI and machine learning, client trackers can automate the workflows you use the most. The entire point of using a client tracker is to simplify client management. So why not use a tool with automation features that does just that?
If you want to set automatic project milestones across different tasks, a client tracker makes it possible. If you want to create and automate intake forms, a client tracker can help you get it done.
A client tracker can automate repetitive tasks to help your agency cut down on costs and direct your time to more urgent tasks. Teamwork.com lets you choose from a gallery of automation templates for the functions you frequently use, making automation simpler than ever.
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5. Customizable views
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Whether you prefer lists, tables, Kanban boards, or Gantt charts, your client tracking system should let you fully customize your views to suit your needs and preferences. Teamwork.com’s client-tracking product gives you all kinds of flexible formats so your entire team can customize their workspaces.
6. Reports and performance data
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If you need data about client performance and profitability, a quality client tracking tool should make it easy to generate reports and get deep insights into your data. Taking advantage of reports and performance data for your clients makes it easier to stay on budget, meet deadlines, and eliminate bottlenecks holding your agency back.
7. Integrations with tools you already use
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Finally, a client tracker should naturally integrate with the tools and software you already use. Cycling back and forth between business tools is the antithesis of Agile project management. Save time and money by investing in a client tracker that offers popular and custom integrations via API — like Teamwork.com.
3 must-have client tracker templates
Now that you know what features to look for in a great client tracker, Teamwork.com has templates that meet everyone’s needs in a project: from the client’s visibility on what the team is working on to your own control and management of the accounts.
Teamwork.com client view template
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In a busy world of client-work, it’s easy to lose sight of the big picture of what you are delivering and the state of all your accounts.
Teamwork.com’s client view template helps you track your ongoing work, how healthy your projects are, and if you are profitable. Here are some of the features that’ll help you out:
Profitability: Note your total cost and check that you’re still in the green.
Budget breakdown: Monitor the project’s budget spending to identify which budgets are approaching their limit and at risk of going over.
Billable vs non-billable time: Track this important time ratio to make sure the project has a healthy balance and that logged time is profitable .
Notes: Make important notations or updates around a client, such as upcoming meetings or proposed agendas.
Project health: Explore the overall status of all projects, specifically focusing on how many are marked as “need attention” .
Teamwork.com client management template
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Say goodbye to manually piecing together information about different accounts: this template gives you a cross-project overview. Whether you’re updating client details, getting a general sense of project progress, or defining specific next steps, the Client Management template offers a centralized hub to keep the client as the focus of your work.
A few functionalities of this template include:
New Project and Task columns that show the volume of work at a glance
Client-level tags that can be added for better categorization
An “Owner” column that allows you to assign teammates as the account owner for easy accountability
Teamwork.com client approval template
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One of the hardest things about working with clients is the constant back-and-forth of different versions of the same deliverable. What needs approval? What changed from one version to the next? Whose feedback are we waiting for? Proofs in Teamwork.com make this process a snap, allowing you to focus on the work that truly matters. Some of the main benefits of this template:
Everything in one place: With a centralized proofs hub, you can easily access the status of each proof in one place.
See feedback in context: Check the historical log of all feedback, so you can always see how a file has progressed from start to finish.
Keep everyone on the same page: Track and review feedback from both clients and your team, ensuring alignment across everybody involved in the project.
Why Teamwork.com is the ideal solution for client tracking
A cloud-based client tracker streamlines every aspect of client management. And getting a handle on how you communicate with and serve your customers puts your agency in the driver’s seat to increase customer satisfaction.
Teamwork’s comprehensive project management and client tracking software is a full-scale solution designed by agency owners for agency owners. It integrates with the tools you already use and offers powerful tools like automation, task management, time tracking, and more to help you make the most of your client relationships.
If you’re ready for all-in-one client and project management, get started with Teamwork.com today.
More client management resources:
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