25. People Pleasing or Customer Service?
As interior designers, customer service is an important part of what we offer. However, if we’re not careful, customer service can soon turn into people pleasing. I see this all the time with my clients so it’s time to get super clear on the differences between high-touch customer service versus people pleasing.
If you’re serving a client and you find yourself going beyond the boundaries of how you typically run your projects, this episode is for you. Of course, we don’t want to upset our clients, but if you’re stepping outside of your process and inconveniencing yourself, that’s something you need to look at.
Tune in this week to distinguish between customer service versus people pleasing. I’m showing you how to see where you fall on the spectrum of customer service to people pleasing, and I’m sharing the impact on your business and your profit of confusing these two concepts so you can decide how you want to move forward in creating a sustainable interior design business that you love.
My brand new workshop, Freedom in the Framework, is taking place on May 9th and 11th 2023 over Zoom. This is a workshop all about time management and simple scheduling routines that will kick off enrollment for Out of Overwhelm, my signature six-month program designed to take you from overwhelmed and stressed to profitable, in control, and fulfilled! Enrollment for our summer round opens May 15th 2023 through to May 25th 2023, and Freedom in the Framework is the event that will get you started. If you want to learn how to manage your time as a creative in a way that feels both supportive and flexible, click here to get more details!
If you loved today’s topic, let’s make sure you never miss an episode. Follow the show now wherever you listen to podcasts. And if you haven’t already, make the time to leave me a rating and review. As a special thank you for taking the time to share your feedback, I’ll send you a little mid-week pick-me-up in the mail, so simply screenshot your review and send me a message on Instagram!
What You’ll Discover from this Episode:
Why it’s so difficult to spot when you go beyond customer service and into people pleasing.
Some ways that people pleasing might be showing up in your interior design business.
Why people pleasing doesn’t actually add value to the overall client experience.
The additional issues that people pleasing has on your business and your mental health.
How to see the difference between high-touch customer service versus people pleasing.
Why you don’t have to contort yourself and your services to deliver amazing customer service.
How to stop people pleasing when delivering the service your client is paying for.
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Full Episode Transcript:
Hey, designer. You’re listening to episode 25. This is the one where I’m going to be talking all about the difference between customer service and people pleasing.
Welcome to The Interior Design Business CEO, the only show for designers who are ready to confidently run and grow their businesses without the stress and anxiety. If you’re ready to develop a bigger vision for your interior design business, free up your time, and streamline your days for productivity and profit, you’re in the right place. I’m Desi Creswell, an award-winning interior designer and certified life and business coach. I help interior designers just like you stop feeling overwhelmed so they can build profitable businesses they love to run. Are you ready to confidently lead your business, clients, and projects? Let’s go.
Hello, designer. Welcome back to the podcast. It feels like forever since I’ve been here with you. We had a two-week spring break extravaganza. So our family went out to California for two weeks and I, of course, needed to record a bunch of episodes in advance to make sure that those were all set for you so they would continue to come out weekly and I wasn’t trying to do that while I was on vacation.
We did so many different things. We saw family, friends, we did Disneyland with our kids for the first time, which was quite the experience. I even got us matching shirts, which is so unlike me, but it was really fun. The kids were really into it. And then after a week in the Newport Beach area we did a week in Palm Springs, which is one of my absolute favorite places to be, and hung out in the pool a lot.
I imagine by the time you listen to this, if you have kids, you have already had spring break and we’re headed into the final stretch of the school year. And if you don’t have kids, I hope you’re just enjoying spring. This is such a fun time of year, especially here in Minnesota where the snow finally starts to melt and we get to enjoy the sunshine a little bit more.
Today what I want to talk about is the difference between customer service and people pleasing. What I want to cover specifically is how to distinguish between the two. I’m going to talk about how I define the two and then signs to look for to know where you fall on the spectrum of people pleasing and customer service. And then I want to talk to you about the impact in your business of confusing these two concepts so that you can decide how you want to move forward.
Before we talk about all of that, I want to make sure that you are aware that there is a brand new workshop for you that you can join where we can work together, and it’s called Freedom in the Framework. And it’s a two-part workshop that is coming up in May.
During session one, you are going to create a personalized time framework that really reflects how you want to leverage and manage your time personally and professionally. You’re going to be creating the framework with my support on the call.
And this is so important to have this framework because you need to know when you’re working, what you’re working on, and know when it’s been enough. And this is going to allow you to mentally turn off the business and get yourself back on your own to-do calendar. It’s also going to make sure that you’re prioritizing your business goals alongside your client work so that you have consistent space for both.
I know for so many designers, the client work squeezes out all of that CEO time where you want to be working on marketing, you want to be dialing in financials. So this is really a great opportunity to take a look at how you’re currently spending your time and decide what needs to shift and make a plan, with my support, to make that happen.
And then the second session is all going to be Q&A and coaching. So that means you’re going to be able to come up with your personalized framework that you created in session one, and ask me any of your questions and get coached on whatever is coming up for you that feels like a challenge. Maybe you’re feeling some resistance to implementing or feeling like it’s not possible for you. We can coach on it all.
This is going to be happening Tuesday, May 9th and Thursday, May 11th. It’s leading up to the next enrollment for Out Of Overwhelm, which opens on May 15th. When you join me for Freedom In the Framework you’re also going to get early access to those limited spots in the program. To join me for Freedom In The Framework, all you have to do is go to www.desiid.com/framework. It’s only $47 and, of course, the link will be in the show notes as well.
And then be on the lookout, if you are not on my email list, be sure to get on there. I have got Freedom In the Framework coming up along with some other really fun things planned for this launch of Out Of Overwhelm and I don’t want you to miss out. The link to get on my email list so that you don’t miss a thing is also going to be in the show notes.
Let’s talk about people pleasing and customer service now. I wanted to bring it here to the podcast because it’s something I see so often with clients. In this example, my client, the designer, had a client they were serving, who they were doing an install for. And the client just loved this one particular side table that they had sourced and installed for her and wanted the source so that she could go buy more of them to put in a few other areas of her home.
And my client came to me asking what they should do about this because they wanted to maintain purchasing in-house. But they also didn’t want to upset the client and they weren’t sure what to do. They could just give her the source, but they also knew that that’s not really what they wanted to do to follow their own process.
This example really highlights the people pleasing versus customer service. Are they going to go outside of how they typically run their projects to try and avoid upsetting the client by saying, no, you can’t have that source, that’s not how we work? Or do they just give her the source, knowing that they’re not going to make any money off of that, knowing that they’re stepping outside of their process and knowing that they might have some sort of issue to deal with on the back end?
I don’t think you’d look at this example and go, “Oh, is this people pleasing versus customer service?” And I don’t think it ever shows up that clearly or distinctly when you’re just going about your day. So I want to give you some other examples about how this might show up.
It could be that client who says, “Could you stop by quickly?” Or, “Can you just take a quick look at this?” And before you know it, you have rearranged your day, postponed that invoicing you were going to send out, and have been on site for two hours. I think that’s happened to all of us. Or it might be that frequent communication outside of working hours, and the clients texting you regularly, your pinging them back, maybe you’re looking at inspiration they sent over when you’re at your kid’s practice, and you’re in that receive/respond loop with them.
Or it might be that a potential client reaches out and their scope is too small, but they are so nice. So you really want to take the project on, even though you know they don’t hit your minimum. Or maybe the client wants to start right now, and you know realistically you don’t have availability for months, but you tell them sure anyways.
When we get these types of requests from clients, our brain often offers up these really innocent sounding justifications. It sounds so sweet, like, oh, just this once, or it won’t take that long. You might be thinking, “Oh, this will make them happy. I don’t want to disappoint them.” And this is the crux of the issue.
If you look at these instances where people pleasing and customer service are being confused, they might at first glance look like little blips. But it is the compound effect of all of these times strung together that will create major problems. And it’s never really just this once or just this quick thing. It always takes longer and causes more complications and more stress for you emotionally than you initially think that it will.
I’ve heard lots of designers say that they think that when they’re available all the time or they’re passing along a discount, that that is providing a level of customer service that is high-touch and accessible. But really it’s people pleasing. And it’s not actually adding real value to the overall client experience. Not to mention it’s causing issues for you.
And this is why we have to distinguish between people pleasing and customer service. I want to share how I define the two so you can see what the difference is for yourself. When I think about people pleasing, I define that as trying to control your client’s thoughts and feelings about you through your actions.
So you do or say certain things in hopes that the client will think or feel a certain way about you. This often sounds like I don’t want to disappoint them. They’re going to think I’m not working on their project fast enough. It’s you trying to control your actions in order to control them as the client and their response to you.
I also define this really as prioritizing other people’s needs, or perceived preferences and opinions. Often people’s needs are just your perception of what you think they would like or want or will think or say. So it’s prioritizing other people’s needs, or their perceived preferences or opinions over your own, to your own long-term detriment. This is definitely different than customer service.
I define customer service as showing up in the relationship between you and the client as the person and the business owner you want to be for everyone’s benefit. I want to be really clear, you don’t have to be the one that loses in the relationship. When you bend and flex and contort, this complicates the relationship and it’s serving no one.
I also like to think of customer service as the client experience, which is really a clear customer journey with steps in place to take your client all the way from finding you, whether that’s online, through a referral, Instagram, and then initial inquiry, all the way through your design process to the final offboarding and even keeping in touch, maintaining that relationship, possibly working with them on other projects.
The client experience or the customer journey is a process that I teach in Out Of Overwhelm, and I call it prospect to profit. And really, it gives you the steps to outline your own client experience from start to finish. And it also becomes the springboard that you can use to establish systems on the front end and the back end of your business where you can be pulling out pieces of that client journey to document and streamline so that your clients experience your business in a really polished, professional way. And you get to experience the streamlining and flow on the back end, those two things work in tandem.
So in people pleasing, you’re trying to control others and you’re prioritizing everyone’s needs above yours to your detriment. And customer service is providing a clear process, guiding your client, being the leader in the relationship, and ultimately delivering the result that they have paid you to produce, which is to build a beautiful room or space or structure for them.
We cross over from customer service into people pleasing as soon as you start to believe that you can control other people by what you say and do. Talk about a lot of pressure. Controlling other humans simply is not possible, and trying to do so is making your job very stressful. You can, of course, give them circumstances where they’re more likely to have favorable opinions through an excellent client experience, what I was talking about with creating your customer journey using that prospect to profit process.
An excellent client experience is not being available to answer text messages 24/7. Clients want to feel held and want the process to feel less complicated and simple. Putting in guardrails around how and when you work is actually supporting the client experience. That is something that you have control over.
Really the only thing you have control over in that dynamic is how you show up for yourself, for your business and for your clients. And that really starts with those intentional decisions about how you set expectations and run the business through your communication guidelines, your process, how purchasing is handled, the types of onboarding and offboarding your clients get to enjoy.
And then you have to embrace the discomfort that arises when you follow through on those expectations that you set. I did an entire episode, episode six, on getting comfortable with discomfort. This is probably going to feel hard for you at first to make the shift from people pleasing to providing excellent customer care.
It is also really hard to sustain the effects on you and your business of people pleasing. This is why embracing emotions is one of the five steps in the Out Of Overwhelm process. It’s something that I teach you how to do and you practice inside the program. Because owning a business, there’s going to be some really amazing things about it and then there’s going to be some really hard things about it, especially when you are in such a people and relationship-based business such as design.
Continuing to people please is just going to snowball. You’re going to have to address this at some point. What I do want to promise you is that it will get easier over time to simply focus on that customer experience. There will be a tipping point that you will reach, and it’s sooner than you probably think it is, where it feels more uncomfortable to people please, than it does to stand your ground and say this is how things are done.
When you make the shift from people pleasing to customer service, or that excellent customer experience, this really is the key to creating a sustainable, profitable interior design business that you are going to actually enjoy leading. It really impacts everything.
There’s three things I want to highlight if you aren’t sold on this idea yet. Number one is how you manage your time. When you people please, you spend so much time doing things you didn’t ever agree to or don’t want to be doing, and especially don’t want to be doing when you aren’t working. Just that alone is going to save you weeks of time throughout the year.
And then if you think about all that time that you’re going to reclaim because you aren’t spending it hemming and hawing about what you should do or shouldn’t do, should you offer this to one client but not another, that is another huge time saving.
And you’re also going to then have control over your schedule in and out of the office. This is really where you step into leadership in your business and in the relationship between the client and you as the designer. This level of confidence feels amazing. It makes it fun to run a business.
The second area that is really impacted when people pleasing and customer service is confused is your profits. What I see is there are so many unpaid hours, markups not being charged or being negotiated, whether that’s with the client or just in your head. So when you shift from people pleasing to serving your clients at this high level, you are going to make more money.
And lastly, your systems. This has a huge impact on systems. There is a reason you want to do things a certain way. I want to remind you of that. Whether that is because it supports your business, your life, both.
People pleasing means going off script of what you decided ahead of time about how you wanted things to run, which, of course, then goes right back to time and profit. Because if you’re creating “processes” on the fly to fit each and every person who has a different preference, you’re going to use a lot of time. You’re going to use your own time, you’re going to end up using your staff’s time when they’re trying to make adjustments to how you said you’d do something in a meeting that they weren’t present at. Think about that.
And then also your mental health, this can not be emphasized enough. When you focus on client experience, you create a situation where you don’t have to feel so stretched thin and feel like you’re always on. You’re also not going to be using all that brain capacity trying to people please that you could be using for something that’s much more valuable to your business and to the client.
Just alone dropping that constant worry and stress of what clients are thinking about you is going to be a game changer. And I’m not saying that you’re not going to care what people think, I think we all care to some extent. But when you’re clear on what you do and don’t do as part of your client experience, you can know when what you’ve done is enough.
And plus, side note, even if you provide a client with the most perfect experience, there will still be ones who are unhappy. And trying to contort yourself to please them is just going to leave you exhausted.
So this week, what I want you to do is just be curious. Observe yourself in client interactions. See whether you’re leaning towards the people pleasing or the customer service side. And what can be really interesting is pay attention to are there certain clients that you tend to people please more than others? And why is that?
I, of course, would love to support you through this. I want you to join me in Out Of Overwhelm. The wait list is up along with all of the details for the round that’s going to start mid July. The link will be in the show notes to get all that information and also join the waitlist, which you definitely want to join because there are some bonuses coming and you also get the earliest access to those limited spots.
That’s all I got for today. In the next episode I’m going to be sharing my thoughts on setting your office hours. And I can’t wait to dive into that, it pairs so well with the upcoming workshop Freedom in the Framework. And until then, I’m wishing you a beautiful week. I’ll talk to you in the next episode.
I’m going to make the bold assumption that you enjoyed today’s topic. Let’s make sure you never miss an episode; follow the show now wherever you listen to your podcasts. If you haven’t already, I would really appreciate it if you’d make the time to leave me a rating and review. This is how I know what you’re loving so I can share more of it.
And it’s also how you can help others find The Interior Design Business CEO. As a thank you for leaving a rating and review, I want to send you a little midweek pick-me-up in the mail. Simply screenshot your review and send me a message on Instagram, @DesiCreswell. I’ll talk to you next week.
Thanks for joining me for this week’s episode of The Interior Design Business CEO. If you want more tips, tools and strategies visit www.desicreswell.com. And if you’re ready to take what you’ve learned on the podcast to the next level, I would love for you to check out my signature group coaching program, Out of Overwhelm.
Welcome to The Interior Design Business CEO, the only show for designers who are ready to confidently run and grow their businesses without the stress and anxiety. If you’re ready to develop a bigger vision for your interior design business, free up your time, and streamline your days for productivity and profit, you’re in the right place. I’m Desi Creswell, an award-winning interior designer and certified life and business coach. I help interior designers just like you stop feeling overwhelmed so they can build profitable businesses they love to run. Are you ready to confidently lead your business, clients, and projects? Let’s go.
Hello, designer. Welcome back to the podcast. It feels like forever since I’ve been here with you. We had a two-week spring break extravaganza. So our family went out to California for two weeks and I, of course, needed to record a bunch of episodes in advance to make sure that those were all set for you so they would continue to come out weekly and I wasn’t trying to do that while I was on vacation.
We did so many different things. We saw family, friends, we did Disneyland with our kids for the first time, which was quite the experience. I even got us matching shirts, which is so unlike me, but it was really fun. The kids were really into it. And then after a week in the Newport Beach area we did a week in Palm Springs, which is one of my absolute favorite places to be, and hung out in the pool a lot.
I imagine by the time you listen to this, if you have kids, you have already had spring break and we’re headed into the final stretch of the school year. And if you don’t have kids, I hope you’re just enjoying spring. This is such a fun time of year, especially here in Minnesota where the snow finally starts to melt and we get to enjoy the sunshine a little bit more.
Today what I want to talk about is the difference between customer service and people pleasing. What I want to cover specifically is how to distinguish between the two. I’m going to talk about how I define the two and then signs to look for to know where you fall on the spectrum of people pleasing and customer service. And then I want to talk to you about the impact in your business of confusing these two concepts so that you can decide how you want to move forward.
Before we talk about all of that, I want to make sure that you are aware that there is a brand new workshop for you that you can join where we can work together, and it’s called Freedom in the Framework. And it’s a two-part workshop that is coming up in May.
During session one, you are going to create a personalized time framework that really reflects how you want to leverage and manage your time personally and professionally. You’re going to be creating the framework with my support on the call.
And this is so important to have this framework because you need to know when you’re working, what you’re working on, and know when it’s been enough. And this is going to allow you to mentally turn off the business and get yourself back on your own to-do calendar. It’s also going to make sure that you’re prioritizing your business goals alongside your client work so that you have consistent space for both.
I know for so many designers, the client work squeezes out all of that CEO time where you want to be working on marketing, you want to be dialing in financials. So this is really a great opportunity to take a look at how you’re currently spending your time and decide what needs to shift and make a plan, with my support, to make that happen.
And then the second session is all going to be Q&A and coaching. So that means you’re going to be able to come up with your personalized framework that you created in session one, and ask me any of your questions and get coached on whatever is coming up for you that feels like a challenge. Maybe you’re feeling some resistance to implementing or feeling like it’s not possible for you. We can coach on it all.
This is going to be happening Tuesday, May 9th and Thursday, May 11th. It’s leading up to the next enrollment for Out Of Overwhelm, which opens on May 15th. When you join me for Freedom In the Framework you’re also going to get early access to those limited spots in the program. To join me for Freedom In The Framework, all you have to do is go to www.desiid.com/framework. It’s only $47 and, of course, the link will be in the show notes as well.
And then be on the lookout, if you are not on my email list, be sure to get on there. I have got Freedom In the Framework coming up along with some other really fun things planned for this launch of Out Of Overwhelm and I don’t want you to miss out. The link to get on my email list so that you don’t miss a thing is also going to be in the show notes.
Let’s talk about people pleasing and customer service now. I wanted to bring it here to the podcast because it’s something I see so often with clients. In this example, my client, the designer, had a client they were serving, who they were doing an install for. And the client just loved this one particular side table that they had sourced and installed for her and wanted the source so that she could go buy more of them to put in a few other areas of her home.
And my client came to me asking what they should do about this because they wanted to maintain purchasing in-house. But they also didn’t want to upset the client and they weren’t sure what to do. They could just give her the source, but they also knew that that’s not really what they wanted to do to follow their own process.
This example really highlights the people pleasing versus customer service. Are they going to go outside of how they typically run their projects to try and avoid upsetting the client by saying, no, you can’t have that source, that’s not how we work? Or do they just give her the source, knowing that they’re not going to make any money off of that, knowing that they’re stepping outside of their process and knowing that they might have some sort of issue to deal with on the back end?
I don’t think you’d look at this example and go, “Oh, is this people pleasing versus customer service?” And I don’t think it ever shows up that clearly or distinctly when you’re just going about your day. So I want to give you some other examples about how this might show up.
It could be that client who says, “Could you stop by quickly?” Or, “Can you just take a quick look at this?” And before you know it, you have rearranged your day, postponed that invoicing you were going to send out, and have been on site for two hours. I think that’s happened to all of us. Or it might be that frequent communication outside of working hours, and the clients texting you regularly, your pinging them back, maybe you’re looking at inspiration they sent over when you’re at your kid’s practice, and you’re in that receive/respond loop with them.
Or it might be that a potential client reaches out and their scope is too small, but they are so nice. So you really want to take the project on, even though you know they don’t hit your minimum. Or maybe the client wants to start right now, and you know realistically you don’t have availability for months, but you tell them sure anyways.
When we get these types of requests from clients, our brain often offers up these really innocent sounding justifications. It sounds so sweet, like, oh, just this once, or it won’t take that long. You might be thinking, “Oh, this will make them happy. I don’t want to disappoint them.” And this is the crux of the issue.
If you look at these instances where people pleasing and customer service are being confused, they might at first glance look like little blips. But it is the compound effect of all of these times strung together that will create major problems. And it’s never really just this once or just this quick thing. It always takes longer and causes more complications and more stress for you emotionally than you initially think that it will.
I’ve heard lots of designers say that they think that when they’re available all the time or they’re passing along a discount, that that is providing a level of customer service that is high-touch and accessible. But really it’s people pleasing. And it’s not actually adding real value to the overall client experience. Not to mention it’s causing issues for you.
And this is why we have to distinguish between people pleasing and customer service. I want to share how I define the two so you can see what the difference is for yourself. When I think about people pleasing, I define that as trying to control your client’s thoughts and feelings about you through your actions.
So you do or say certain things in hopes that the client will think or feel a certain way about you. This often sounds like I don’t want to disappoint them. They’re going to think I’m not working on their project fast enough. It’s you trying to control your actions in order to control them as the client and their response to you.
I also define this really as prioritizing other people’s needs, or perceived preferences and opinions. Often people’s needs are just your perception of what you think they would like or want or will think or say. So it’s prioritizing other people’s needs, or their perceived preferences or opinions over your own, to your own long-term detriment. This is definitely different than customer service.
I define customer service as showing up in the relationship between you and the client as the person and the business owner you want to be for everyone’s benefit. I want to be really clear, you don’t have to be the one that loses in the relationship. When you bend and flex and contort, this complicates the relationship and it’s serving no one.
I also like to think of customer service as the client experience, which is really a clear customer journey with steps in place to take your client all the way from finding you, whether that’s online, through a referral, Instagram, and then initial inquiry, all the way through your design process to the final offboarding and even keeping in touch, maintaining that relationship, possibly working with them on other projects.
The client experience or the customer journey is a process that I teach in Out Of Overwhelm, and I call it prospect to profit. And really, it gives you the steps to outline your own client experience from start to finish. And it also becomes the springboard that you can use to establish systems on the front end and the back end of your business where you can be pulling out pieces of that client journey to document and streamline so that your clients experience your business in a really polished, professional way. And you get to experience the streamlining and flow on the back end, those two things work in tandem.
So in people pleasing, you’re trying to control others and you’re prioritizing everyone’s needs above yours to your detriment. And customer service is providing a clear process, guiding your client, being the leader in the relationship, and ultimately delivering the result that they have paid you to produce, which is to build a beautiful room or space or structure for them.
We cross over from customer service into people pleasing as soon as you start to believe that you can control other people by what you say and do. Talk about a lot of pressure. Controlling other humans simply is not possible, and trying to do so is making your job very stressful. You can, of course, give them circumstances where they’re more likely to have favorable opinions through an excellent client experience, what I was talking about with creating your customer journey using that prospect to profit process.
An excellent client experience is not being available to answer text messages 24/7. Clients want to feel held and want the process to feel less complicated and simple. Putting in guardrails around how and when you work is actually supporting the client experience. That is something that you have control over.
Really the only thing you have control over in that dynamic is how you show up for yourself, for your business and for your clients. And that really starts with those intentional decisions about how you set expectations and run the business through your communication guidelines, your process, how purchasing is handled, the types of onboarding and offboarding your clients get to enjoy.
And then you have to embrace the discomfort that arises when you follow through on those expectations that you set. I did an entire episode, episode six, on getting comfortable with discomfort. This is probably going to feel hard for you at first to make the shift from people pleasing to providing excellent customer care.
It is also really hard to sustain the effects on you and your business of people pleasing. This is why embracing emotions is one of the five steps in the Out Of Overwhelm process. It’s something that I teach you how to do and you practice inside the program. Because owning a business, there’s going to be some really amazing things about it and then there’s going to be some really hard things about it, especially when you are in such a people and relationship-based business such as design.
Continuing to people please is just going to snowball. You’re going to have to address this at some point. What I do want to promise you is that it will get easier over time to simply focus on that customer experience. There will be a tipping point that you will reach, and it’s sooner than you probably think it is, where it feels more uncomfortable to people please, than it does to stand your ground and say this is how things are done.
When you make the shift from people pleasing to customer service, or that excellent customer experience, this really is the key to creating a sustainable, profitable interior design business that you are going to actually enjoy leading. It really impacts everything.
There’s three things I want to highlight if you aren’t sold on this idea yet. Number one is how you manage your time. When you people please, you spend so much time doing things you didn’t ever agree to or don’t want to be doing, and especially don’t want to be doing when you aren’t working. Just that alone is going to save you weeks of time throughout the year.
And then if you think about all that time that you’re going to reclaim because you aren’t spending it hemming and hawing about what you should do or shouldn’t do, should you offer this to one client but not another, that is another huge time saving.
And you’re also going to then have control over your schedule in and out of the office. This is really where you step into leadership in your business and in the relationship between the client and you as the designer. This level of confidence feels amazing. It makes it fun to run a business.
The second area that is really impacted when people pleasing and customer service is confused is your profits. What I see is there are so many unpaid hours, markups not being charged or being negotiated, whether that’s with the client or just in your head. So when you shift from people pleasing to serving your clients at this high level, you are going to make more money.
And lastly, your systems. This has a huge impact on systems. There is a reason you want to do things a certain way. I want to remind you of that. Whether that is because it supports your business, your life, both.
People pleasing means going off script of what you decided ahead of time about how you wanted things to run, which, of course, then goes right back to time and profit. Because if you’re creating “processes” on the fly to fit each and every person who has a different preference, you’re going to use a lot of time. You’re going to use your own time, you’re going to end up using your staff’s time when they’re trying to make adjustments to how you said you’d do something in a meeting that they weren’t present at. Think about that.
And then also your mental health, this can not be emphasized enough. When you focus on client experience, you create a situation where you don’t have to feel so stretched thin and feel like you’re always on. You’re also not going to be using all that brain capacity trying to people please that you could be using for something that’s much more valuable to your business and to the client.
Just alone dropping that constant worry and stress of what clients are thinking about you is going to be a game changer. And I’m not saying that you’re not going to care what people think, I think we all care to some extent. But when you’re clear on what you do and don’t do as part of your client experience, you can know when what you’ve done is enough.
And plus, side note, even if you provide a client with the most perfect experience, there will still be ones who are unhappy. And trying to contort yourself to please them is just going to leave you exhausted.
So this week, what I want you to do is just be curious. Observe yourself in client interactions. See whether you’re leaning towards the people pleasing or the customer service side. And what can be really interesting is pay attention to are there certain clients that you tend to people please more than others? And why is that?
I, of course, would love to support you through this. I want you to join me in Out Of Overwhelm. The wait list is up along with all of the details for the round that’s going to start mid July. The link will be in the show notes to get all that information and also join the waitlist, which you definitely want to join because there are some bonuses coming and you also get the earliest access to those limited spots.
That’s all I got for today. In the next episode I’m going to be sharing my thoughts on setting your office hours. And I can’t wait to dive into that, it pairs so well with the upcoming workshop Freedom in the Framework. And until then, I’m wishing you a beautiful week. I’ll talk to you in the next episode.
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Thanks for joining me for this week’s episode of The Interior Design Business CEO. If you want more tips, tools and strategies visit www.desicreswell.com. And if you’re ready to take what you’ve learned on the podcast to the next level, I would love for you to check out my signature group coaching program, Out of Overwhelm.
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