• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Engineering Management Institute

  • About
    • Meet Anthony Fasano, P.E.
    • EMI’s Mission, Vision & Values
    • Meet Team EMI
  • Content
    • Blog
    • Podcasts
      • The Engineering Career Coach Podcast
      • The Civil Engineering Podcast
        • Women in Civil Engineering
        • Civil Engineering Entrepreneurs
        • The Civil Engineering CEO Podcast
      • The Structural Engineering Channel
      • The Geotechnical Engineering Podcast
      • The Engineering Quality Control Podcast
      • The Engineering Project Management Podcast
      • AEC Engineering and Technology Podcast
      • This Week in Civil Engineering
    • TV
    • Videos
    • Books
    • Recommended Reading
    • Sponsors
  • Services
    • Training
    • Hiring Solutions
    • Webinars
  • FE-PE Exams
  • Clients
  • Contact
  • Training

  • About
    • Meet Anthony Fasano, P.E.
    • EMI’s Mission, Vision & Values
    • Meet Team EMI
  • Content
    • Blog
    • Podcasts
      • The Engineering Career Coach Podcast
      • The Civil Engineering Podcast
        • Women in Civil Engineering
        • Civil Engineering Entrepreneurs
        • The Civil Engineering CEO Podcast
      • The Structural Engineering Channel
      • The Geotechnical Engineering Podcast
      • The Engineering Quality Control Podcast
      • The Engineering Project Management Podcast
      • AEC Engineering and Technology Podcast
      • This Week in Civil Engineering
    • TV
    • Videos
    • Books
    • Recommended Reading
    • Sponsors
  • Services
    • Training
    • Hiring Solutions
    • Webinars
  • FE-PE Exams
  • Clients
  • Contact
  • Training

How Engineering Firms Can Prevent Client Churn

September 19, 2022 By EMI

Client ChurnClients are arguably the most important aspect of running a successful and healthy engineering firm. What’s even more important is retaining them. Did you know it can be anywhere from five to 25 times more expensive to gain a new customer than to retain an existing one? So, how are you preventing client churn at your firm? On the surface, it can feel like there’s little control a firm can have over what its clients do, but in reality, improving retention starts internally.  

Keep on reading to learn our tips for improving your internal operations to boost client retention at your firm. 

It Starts With Your Employees 

Client churn is directly tied to employee churn. By making a concerted effort to focus on your employees, you’re in turn strengthening client relationships and retention. Clients may sign on for your firm’s reputation or the strategy you propose to tackle their work, but the reason they stay goes beyond that. Clients like to know that their business and needs are fully understood. Consistency is key to building this trusting relationship between your staff and clients. If a client is constantly being shifted to a new team or staffer, it will always feel like a new engineering firm to them.  

Client Churn

Establishing healthy firm culture is not an overnight task. It takes dedicated time and patience, and requires organic energy and genuine intent. But with the right leadership and plan of actions and goals, you can take pride in knowing you, as well as your clients, are deeply valued.  

Focus on Resource Allocation 

Going hand-in-hand with employee retention, how you manage staff capacity impacts your clients’ experience. From a client’s perspective, they’d like to have the best team on their project and feel as though all their tasks and deadlines are prioritized. Internally, you know trying to accommodate everyone’s needs can become overwhelming, to say the least. 

If you’re still using Excel to plot out employee schedules and spending extra time meeting about each staffer’s status, chances are things aren’t as efficient as they could be.  

Using resource allocation software to manage your staff streamlines this whole process. This type of software pulls in the employee’s tracked time and already assigned projects and tasks, so project managers can automatically see who is available to take on the workload. From there, you can also view staff of the same job function, or the whole project team, in case you need to reassign or shift any tasks. Having these insights ensures you’re mapping out your staff capacity at optimal efficiency and makes it simple to assign each client with the best staffer for the job.  

Practice Clear Communication  

While this may sound like a no-brainer, having a healthy open line of communication with your clients (and team) can solve and prevent so many issues. Create open and transparent communication for each tier of your firm: management to staff, project managers to consultants, and project teams to clients.  

Especially with clients, being proactive with sharing information on the status of their project and budget updates helps them have a better understanding of the effort your firm is putting into the work and builds trust. If you wait to retroactively tell them the project is now behind, or a budget has gone over, they’re more likely to be upset and have a negative experience.  

It may take some time and hard work, but by practicing the tactics and initiatives above, clients will notice the effort you put in and those relationships will become stickier. Of course, there’s no harm in still going after new engagements — just don’t forget about all the potential you already have. Looking for more tips and advice from experts in engineering? Learn more here.  

About the Author 

Client ChurnLeanna Michniuk is a content marketing specialist at BigTime Software, the leading professional services automation software. Creating relevant and applicable content for those in the professional services industry, Leanna is dedicated to creating work that helps boost efficiency in service organizations. BigTime is recognized as one of Inc. 5000’s Fastest-Growing Companies in America and is on G2’s Top 100 Software Companies list. 

We would love to hear any questions you might have or stories you might share on the things you do to prevent client churn at your firm. 

Please leave your comments, feedback or questions in the section below.

  • If you enjoyed this post, please consider downloading our free list of 33 Productivity Routines of Top Engineering Executives. Click the button below to download.

    Download the Productivity Routines

To your success,

Anthony Fasano, PE, LEED AP
Engineering Management Institute
Author of Engineer Your Own Success

Related Posts

  • TCEP 200: The Effective Engineering Client: Why It Matters for Engineering Firms
  • The Best Engineering Consulting Firms to Work For
  • Large versus Small Engineering Firms - Engineering Career TV Ep. 8
  • Better Marketing for Engineering Firms Through Better Public Speaking
  • Delivering Stellar Client Service to Engineering Clients

Filed Under: Blog, Organization/Productivity/Time Management Tagged With: Client Churn, communication, employee churn, Leanna Michniuk, Resource Allocation

Primary Sidebar

Subscribe To Our Newsletter

And Get Custom Content Delivered To You Weekly

PM Training

engineering management lessons

career readiness

Categories

  • AECT – AEC Engineering and Technology Podcast
  • Blog
    • Business Development
    • Business/Entrepreneurship
    • Career Goals and Challenges
    • Communication/Public Speaking
    • COVID19
    • Credentials
    • Enlightenment
    • Ethics & Integrity
    • Job Search/Salary/Relocation
    • Leadership/Management
    • Mentoring
    • Networking/Client Relations
    • News and Events
    • Organization/Productivity/Time Management
    • Personal Development and Professionalism
    • Program Management
    • Project Management
    • Travel
    • Work Life Balance
  • Civil Engineering
  • Engineering Career TV
  • Engineering Technology
  • TCEP-The Civil Engineering Podcast
    • Business Development
    • Business/Entrepreneurship
    • Career Goals and Challenges
    • Civil Engineering Entrepreneurs
    • Communication & Public Speaking
    • Credentials
    • Ethics/Integrity
    • Infrastructure
    • Job Search/Salary/Relocation
    • Leadership/Management
    • Mentoring
    • Project Management
    • Women in Engineering
  • TECC Podcast-The Engineering Career Coach Podcast
    • Business/Entrepreneurship
    • Career Game Changers
    • Career Goals and Challenges
    • Communication/Public Speaking
    • Credentials
    • Enlightenment
    • Job Search/Salary/Relocation
    • Leadership/Management
    • Mentoring
    • Networking/Client Relations
    • News and Events
    • Organization/Productivity/Time Management
    • Personal Development and Professionalism
    • Project Management
    • Work Life Balance
  • TEPM – The Engineering Project Management Podcast
  • TEQC – The Engineering Quality Control Podcast
  • TGEP – The Geotechnical Engineering Podcast
    • Tunneling Series
  • TSEC-The Structural Engineering Channel
  • TWiCE
  • Uncategorized
  • Women in Engineering

TECC Sidebar Featured Final

ENGINEERING MANAGEMENT INSTITUTE

We Can Help You:

  • Build solutions to attract talented professionals.
  • Develop your staff’s people skills.
  • Create career roadmaps for your staff.
  • Provide PM training for your professionals.
  • Build custom development programs.
  • Scale sustainably.

Location:

50 E. Ridgewood Avenue #129

Ridgewood NJ, 07450

800-920-4007

Copyright © 2023 • All Rights Reserved • Property of Engineering Management Institute • Terms of Service • Privacy Policy

SPECIAL DOWNLOAD

33 Productivity Routines of
Top Engineering Executives

x