Voice acting hosts a different form of clients than most other businesses. You would often see clients requiring much less information or interactions with other service-based businesses, while voice acting requires constant inputs and outputs from both sides. As a result, it is one of the most important functions that any voice acting studio has to manage. This article will teach you the essentials of how to interact and work with clients efficiently to create the best atmosphere possible for both you and them. Interaction with clients is essential since you’re doing high paying work with few clients, making it essential to have them come back instead of seeking out another studio.
Pre-Session Arrangements
The first step to working with clients is to first confirm the session. Your client will often contact you through whatever medium you’re using and ask for a voice recording session, that’s when you arrange all the details with them. Some of these details include asking for a script, establishing the amount of hours they may need for the project, or maybe even the amount of words. These are all quantitative features that should be decided beforehand to make sure that the client comes ready and that you are also ready for whatever they might need during the session.
Arranging your method of communication is perhaps the most important step within the pre-session arrangements. This includes the medium in which you will be communicating with your client, such as Skype, Teamspeak, Team Viewer, Discord, etc. The communication methods will be described in more detail later within the article.
Understanding Your Client’s Needs
Communication is the most important skill that you will probably need as a voice recording studio manager. This extends further than just asking the client what they may need or what methods they might want to use to achieve their goals. The most important part is to actually understand what they’re asking of you. If you need to ask them more questions, go ahead, but the most important thing is that you make sure you know what they want at the end of the day.
Some important steps to take to ensure this understanding is that you repeat to your client what they are asking of you in your own words. For example after they are done expressing what they need, you summarize it back to them. This way, both you and the client will be able to ensure that there’s mutual agreement. It will also make sure that if you misunderstood something, your client can clear it up for you.
Another step that you can take would be to help them come up with a plan beforehand if they didn’t already. This plan shouldn’t be the script that they’re planning to use, but a guideline that expresses their goals. These goals should include what they want out of the project in a step-by-step manner and in a way that you can understand.
Communication Outside of the Session
After the first session, or even before, you might want to figure out the method in which you would like to communicate with the clients outside of the session. As previously stated, this can be done by using third party applications. It is preferred that the medium used has the ability to screen share. This is so that you can show the client what you’re working on directly without the need to explain everything. This also allows the client to know for sure that progress is being made so that they can plan ahead accordingly.
However, if the client doesn’t have the ability to have a video call or a screen share session with you, then it will be helpful to use text messaging. With this, it’s preferable that the application being used can transfer videos.
Timing the Session
In order to sustain a fluid, efficient, and effective session, it’s essential that timing is managed correctly. You and the client both need to work on managing your sessions efficiently and effectively. This means that goals should be achieved using the least amount of resources possible. In this case, your resources consist of time.
Time management could be ensured by preparing beforehand and agreeing with the client on what to work on. This includes keeping them updated as discussed in the communications part of this article. You can use a words to time converter for example to see how long it would take to read a script.
Conclusion
Remember that both of your resources are limited. The client wants to get things done quickly and efficiently while you might want to catch up on other jobs. It’s important to manage your time well, as well as prepare beforehand with the client. Keeping in close contact with your client is easily as important as time management. Master this and you will be able to do more jobs and satisfy more customers in the long term! Speaking of customer satisfaction, there are more articles about this topic on Mello Studio’s website.
