How To Improve Client Communication: Best Practices + Guide

Client communication is the ongoing exchange of information between your team and your clients throughout a working relationship. This client correspondence includes emails, text messaging, meetings, reports, feedback sessions, and even silent gaps where clients are waiting to hear from you.

Customer communication includes everything from onboarding and project updates to billing and post-project check-ins.

Client communication matters because it directly impacts how well projects run, how satisfied clients are, and whether they choose to work with you again.

Missed messages or vague updates create friction, slow down progress, and make it harder for clients to see you as the one leading the project. Clear, consistent communication reinforces trust and keeps the relationship on solid ground.

When clients feel like they’re chasing what should be regular updates or guessing what’s next, it affects how they perceive your reliability. Communication isn’t just about exchanging information – it’s how clients judge whether you’re in control and on top of things.

When clients have to follow up for updates or find out about changes on their own, it sends the wrong message. It makes it seem like you’re not in control of the project (even if you’re delivering as promised).

Good communication reinforces the sense that you’re on top of things and helps clients stay confident in your work.

How you communicate affects how clients perceive your professionalism. If updates feel disorganized or reactive, it reflects poorly (even if the work is solid). Clear, consistent communication helps reinforce the idea that your team is organized, reliable, and easy to work with.

Setting clent expectations early (like in the onboarding process) helps avoid last-minute surprises around timelines, scope, or budgets. When you keep things clear from the start, it’s easier for clients to stay aligned and for your team to stay focused.

When communication is scattered, unclear, or vague, clients often feel like they’re managing the process themselves. If that feeling sticks around, you can say goodbye to the client and hello to churn, lost revenue, and additional rework.

Here’s what that looks like in practice:

You can improve client communication by simplifying tools, clarifying roles, and giving everyone a shared view of what’s happening.

Most problems start when messages, updates, and files are scattered across platforms. This causes missed follow-ups, duplicated effort, or rework.

Productive solves these problems by centralizing all client interactions into one shared workspace, keeping everything organized and visible in one place.

Below, we’ll show you the proven best practices for improving client communication.

Unclear onboarding is a common friction point – clients don’t know where to go, who to talk to, or what’s expected. Some teams even create extra spreadsheets just to track and communicate project actions.

Instead, use a shared client communication plan:

Productive’s client portal lets your project teams and customers work in one place. You can create and share welcome documentation and project details so onboarding starts smoothly and stays organized.

Different messages need different formats, but many teams struggle because their business communication channels are overloaded or misused.

It’s not uncommon to see client feedback spread across Slack, action items buried in email threads, and status updates lost in spreadsheets. That big problem is super frequent for agencies juggling multiple projects for multiple customers.

Choosing the right format isn’t just about efficiency – it’s about setting a consistent rhythm that your clients can rely on.

Here’s a short overview of different channels, formats, and when to use them.

Keep in mind that more channels ≠ better communication, so don’t overwhelm. Aim to centralize your client-facing operations in a single place.

Manual client updates are one of the biggest time drains of billable work. They are especially frequent when status reports live in spreadsheets or PDFs that need exporting and updating every week.

Real-time project visibility is something that many teams struggle with.

In Productive, clients can view live project dashboards that show progress bars, timelines, and upcoming deliverables (without needing your team to send a thing). When updates are needed, automated reports can handle that, too.

A big source of rework and misalignment is assuming you understood what the customer meant (when you didn’t). To avoid this, you should build in small habits (like active listening) that close the loop during every interaction.

Why it matters: Agencies often lose time fixing deliverables that were technically done (but not quite what the other person had in mind). Listening carefully and confirming the ask up front avoids that kind of costly back-and-forth.

How you phrase updates affects how your customers perceive your team, especially when plans change. The goal isn’t to sugarcoat or sound overly nice, but to be clear, action-oriented and keep your clients informed.

Here are our top tips for improving your communication skills:

Why it matters: Unclear phrasing often causes unnecessary follow-up. Customers don’t just want status updates – they want clarity and confidence.

Productive is a huge help here because it gives your team one source of truth, so updates are accurate, consistent, and grounded in real-time project data.

When things don’t go according to plan (like missed feedback, late approvals, or scope changes), customers notice how your customer support responds.

Staying calm, clear, and organized shows that you’re still leading the project, even when timelines shift.

Why it matters: Agencies often lose credibility not because of the issue itself, but because of how the response is handled. When clients don’t see a clear plan or next step, they lose confidence.

Productive gives you concrete forecasts, so that you can explain to the client how the changes will impact the outcome.

You can also use the Scenario Builder to figure out what to change to achieve the best possible outcome for your client, and make big decisions with more confidence. 

The best tools for better communication are messaging apps and project management software with centralized client portals. The idea is to keep messages, updates, documents, and timelines in one place (without forcing your team to jump between tabs or chase updates manually).

Below are the essential categories that support better, more consistent client interactions.

When clients don’t know where to find updates, documents, or project milestones, they send more emails (or worse, stop checking in altogether).

In case you need choosing advice, check out our list of the best project management software with client portal.

Messaging tools are great for quick questions and file handoffs, but they’re a terrible place to manage scope or approvals.

One of the biggest pain points for many companies is teams giving clients outdated info because internal systems aren’t connected to external updates.

In case you need more food for thought, you might want to check out our guide on how to choose PM software.

Manually sending the same reminders and status notes wastes time and introduces human error. Teams often get frustrated over creating weekly check-ins or chasing clients for approvals.

Some use separate Excel trackers just to prepare client-facing updates, which isn’t a good thing.

Proven psychological strategies for effective communication with clients are: the NURS technique (reset tone in tense situations), the norm of reciprocity (builds mutual trust), and adapting your communication style using the chameleon effect (improves rapport, consistent, confident communication).

Stick with the article because below we’ll show you how each strategy works along with practical examples.

When a client is stressed or frustrated, using empathy (display emotional intelligence) and structure can quickly reset the tone.

Why it helps: Clients who feel heard are far more likely to stay engaged, even if budgets or time entries shift.

This technique is especially useful when paired with Productive’s approval flows and comment history, so you have full context to respond clearly.

Clients respond positively when they feel like you’re invested. Proactively sharing useful templates, insights, or updates (before being asked) makes customers more willing to reciprocate with timely feedback and decisions.

Productive makes this easy with reusable templates, timeline previews, and visibility settings that let you share progress proactively (without extra manual work).

Why it helps: Small up-front investments (like sharing a rough timeline or giving early visibility in Productive) often speed up approvals and reduce last-minute surprises.

Matching tone and communication style (not mimicking, just adapting) can improve how customers perceive your collaboration.

Why it helps: Customers interpret fluency in their “language” as professionalism. This subtle alignment shows attention to detail and builds trust over time.

You can tell if your client communication is working by looking at how often customers follow up, how clearly they respond, and whether key milestones move forward without confusion. Communication works when it reduces the need for clarification, not when it creates more of it.

We talk more about communication in our detailed agency operations guide.

There are a whole lot more metrics you should keep your eyes on. If you’d like a detailed overview read our guide on the most important project management metrics.

Productive helps you measure and improve this process by centralizing updates, task comments, and big decisions in one place. With everything documented and time-stamped, it’s easier to identify lags, missed approvals, or updates that didn’t land.

Instead of guessing how things are going, build feedback into your regular check-ins. Ask your customers how could you communicate smoother. Small tweaks (like adjusting when updates go out or how they’re formatted) often make a big difference.

Improvement starts with measurement, testing, and incremental changes (baby steps).

Improving client communication means solving the friction that slows work down: unclear updates, missed feedback, scattered tools, or repeated follow-ups. Agencies particularly struggle with poor, one-sided interactions because they don’t have a structured plan to communicate with their clients that includes different scenarios.

Productive helps you fix that. It gives you one workspace where project updates, approvals, timelines, and tasks all stay connected. As a result, nothing gets lost, and customers stay confident in your delivery process.

Book a quick demo to see how Productive helps you simplify client communication and stay in control of your projects.