From XU Magazine, 
Online News

Working With Clients Remotely

March 24, 2020

Working remotely is something many businesses are facing amongst the Covid-19 pandemic. A large number of businesses are closing their doors and allowing employees to work from home to lessen the spread and take care of their more vulnerable staff.
This article originated from the Xero blog. The XU Hub is an independent news and media platform - for Xero users, by Xero users. Any content, imagery and associated links below are directly from Xero and not produced by the XU Hub.
You can find the original post here:

Businesses who can offer employees the opportunity to work from home may come across difficulties working with clients. Many clients are unable to implement work from home technologies due to their line of business so it may be difficult to continue open conversation with them. In this blog we cover some tips around communication, software and how SuiteFiles can help. Many of the options mentioned below have current (no obligation) extended free trials to support those suddenly working from home.  

Software

Software like Slack, Zoom, Asana and SuiteFiles can be very useful in times like these. As many businesses make the move to work from home, these can ease the communication and information gap between you and your clients.  

Slack allows you to instantly message clients if there is something urgent, this way you are not adding to the overload of email sent and received each day. Zoom allows you to have meetings with clients face-to-screen-to-face, while sharing anything you wish to show them through screen casting. Asana or Monday.com allows you to create projects and share these with clients for a visual way of sending tasks and ideas. SuiteFiles is your information sharing software with many features to facilitate your work from home move.  

If you are considering giving any of these software options a go, we suggest contacting them to find out your options. Most businesses are very interested in how they can help out during this time of need.  

Communicating with Clients

The most important part of working with clients is communication, whether they are remote clients or someone you are able to visit. The move from face-to-face to digital communication may be difficult for many businesses who are not used to this way of working. Making sure there is open and clear communication is so important in any workplace.  

Ensuring tasks and documents are easily accessible and clearly defined will be important steps to introducing this move. When using software such as Slack and Zoom to create an easier communication path, bear in mind things like time zones and when clients would prefer to be contacted. Having an initial conversation before making the work from home move will mitigate issues arising around being unsure about certain technology or simply not having the resources to use needed technology. Working with your clients abilities is so important during this time so everyone is able to remain calm and work (as much as possible) as normal.  

SuiteFiles Wants to Help  

SuiteFiles is a large supporter of the remote and work from home environment due to the amount of flexibility this allows employees. Now, during this time of a pandemic we are looking out for businesses needing to quickly make the work from home move more than ever.  

The SuiteFiles connect feature is perfect for sharing documents with clients, sending files for clients to sign and easily send back, setting tasks for clients with relevant messaging options and directly saving emails to specific folders. Each file sent back and forth can be set to automatically be saved into a specific relevant folder. To see more ways you are able to collaborate with clients, see our features list (here)

We encourage businesses hoping to make a seamless move to the work from home environment to get in contact with us so we can discuss options. We wish to make this process as easy as possible and give everyone involved a stress free onboard as we understand how this time of panic can affect the workplace.  

Why leave it there?

To learn more about SuiteFiles

Straight to your inbox

Subscribe to our newsletter for updates as they happen
We hate spam too. We NEVER sell our mailing list.
Thank you! Your submission has been received!
Oops! Something went wrong while submitting the form.