Building a relationship with your existing clients should be the #1 item on our ‘to-do’ lists—but it seems to always fall through the cracks. Providing Continuous Client Care (CCC) is more than client maintenance, it is a philosophy that integrates a client care culture firm-wide and merges marketing with your core practice of design and project management.

The CCC program addresses both philosophy and specifics to help principals, managers and marketers. It provides the foundation and tools to better understand and serve your clients. The 12-Step program serves as an organizational tool for the training itself and as a roadmap for the firm.

The 4 Stages of the 12-Steps to accomplish this program are:

Preparation Stage—Understand the issues and lay the groundwork
This stage involved gaining leadership commitment to this program, educating and performing research on other similar programs, performing an internal systems assessment and an external systems assessment

Training Stage—Give knowledge and skills to the do-ers
This stage is intense training to the appropriate staff on your firm’s client care culture along with classes on industry trends in client care, understanding customer values, training relationship and communication skills. Two 3-hour classes are included along with homework assignments.

Implementation Stage—Maintain activity and feedback systems
This stage involves creating and implementing your ‘client relationship firm systems’, creating and implementing you firm ‘project questionnaire form’ and finally inventing some client care activities that go beyond the typical

Follow-Up Stage—Implement improvements
This stage is about follow-up with your in-house team’s, then follow-up back to your client and finally a yearly evaluation on the full program

All participants will receive a firm client care handbook and will become part of the firm-wide client care reporting mechanism.