Enhancing the Client Experience

By Michelle Owens, WPICC of Mo & Co Events

The wedding planning experience should be an enjoyable one for couples, and for the wedding planner. It is your job to make it as stress-free and enjoyable as possible. A great client experience starts with becoming informed about the couple’s individual needs, wants and expectations.
There are many ways to improve the client experience for couples from start to end when working as a wedding planner. Here are a few tips to enhance the client experience:

Spend time on the client-facing and user experience of your brand and your business

There are many programs and CRM systems out there to assist with the process. This will not only help you as a business owner in terms of streamlining your business and remaining efficient. With the automation you will never miss a beat on a deadline, a date, touchpoint, or meeting and your clients will notice. All responses and check-ins will be prompt and remain consistent. Allowing them access to back end portals, timelines, onboarding materials will leave them feeling more exposed and included to the work being done. They will very quickly find comfort in you, your team, your services and the investment that they have made. Adding these efficiencies can also assist in justifying price increases to you and to your clients.

Establishing a good relationship with the couple

It is important to get to know the couple, their likes and dislikes, and their expectations as early as
possible. Ask questions, and listen to their answers. This will help you to understand their vision and create an event that is tailored to their needs.

Be sure to include content and questions that are outside of the wedding and event itself, but about the individuals and the couple personally and in their day-to-day lives. This will allow you to incorporate more details specific to the couple along the way. You will be surprised how you’ll hear and see things over the course of your time working together that remind you of them.

Being organized and efficient

Create an organized timeline and ensure that tasks are completed on time and within budget. This will help to alleviate stress and ensure that everything runs smoothly to enhance the client experience.

Staying on top of the latest trends

Keep up with the latest trends in wedding planning so that you can offer the couple fresh ideas and creative solutions.
Trends do not just have to be the “aesthetic” items and details, but also the logistics of what you see and do at an event and wedding and what makes sense. If you have experience working with a certain detail or timeline addition and change, speak up. For most of your couples, it is their first time going through this process. You, as the wedding professional have seen and experienced a lot more events than they have to know what works and what doesn’t. Remember that they value your opinion.

Keeping the couple informed

Make sure that the couple is kept updated on the progress of the planning process. This will help to alleviate stress and ensure that the couple is involved in the planning process. Communication is huge.
Oftentimes you may go weeks or months without speaking to a client during the in-betweens of timelines and check-ins. Even if you find you have nothing new to report at all in the process, keep them posted on the conversations and the work going on behind the scenes. This will give your clients peace of mind that things are being done and they will recognize the value in having you work on their team for them while they have their time back.

Being flexible

Keep in mind that the couple may have opposing schedules to you, and even to each other. For most clients planning their wedding in thier personal life, this is outside of their 9-5 professional hours, thus meaning you may need to make more time on evenings and weekends. They may take one vacation day here and there for site visits, consults and meetings, so be respectful of their time and willing to move things around to make these dates and times work for everyone.