How much time to spend on communication with the client? How to keep in touch?

Question

Work organization

Good afternoon! There were difficulties in communicating with customers.
Activities related to the design and development of web projects.
A fairly good amount of work and many like to discuss issues on the phone. In fact, it turns out that the whole day on the phone. How do you build communication with the client? Is there a clause in the contract clause, how much time is given to the client?
Share your experience.

Answer 1

It was similar when for 4 hours I could discuss something insignificant. Only a conversation with the customer helped about the fact that it is physically difficult to do something and be distracted by conversations.
The first meeting at the beginning of the day to discuss current tasks.
The second meeting 2 hours before the end of the working day to discuss what has been done and what needs to be fixed.
The main thing is that they should not last more than 30 minutes :)
As an improvement - a list of tasks on the board (trelo / jira) that clients can see - then they know the status of the execution and the current list of tasks.

Answer 2

I have three types of client interaction:
PS I have long noticed that if a person stubbornly does not want to discuss anything by text and insists on calling, then the person himself is inadequate and the issue of discussion is muddy. Most likely, at the stage of acceptance, the "subscriber" will hoot that "he saw everything completely wrong."

Answer 3

My experience (9 years on fl) is only Skype correspondence. Sometimes (very rarely) - the first conversation is live, then only correspondence.
99% of talker clients are in fact not very high-quality customers, so I prefer to miss 1% and save a lot of time.

Answer 4

There is a good way out. Enter a rule - discussion of current issues only by e-mail.
When writing, any person begins to formulate his thoughts differently (more specifically).
You can read when you have time.
The history of correspondence is saved, which can sometimes help out.

Answer 5

And I just keep track of the time spent on the discussion.

Answer 6

Bad client. I would think to jump off as early as possible. Or put it in a rigid framework.
It is possible for him to calculate for reference how much time was spent on the discussion.

Answer 7

Discussion - only at the junctions (discussion-work-[here]-work-....) or at incomprehensible moments (from the side of the developer). If there is an addition to this work, the client sends it by mail.
Everything else (regarding the project) is the developer's working time.

Answer 8

Your question lacks clarifying details:
- Are you the only one working on the project? or act as a manager?
- what is the nature of your communication, that is, a couple of real examples of what you are discussing.
If you are working alone on a project, you tell the customer that while we are discussing this issue with you, we have work to do. So let's schedule a specific time for all your questions to be voiced. And set aside an hour a day for this. Even better, if possible, as advised above, translate all discussions in email format, but in reality, most often a voice discussion is easier for a client than systematization and formalization of his thoughts. Therefore, if the client is dear to you, it is worth allocating some reasonable time per day for him. Large clients always crave voice communication, this does not negate business correspondence.
If you are a manager, you can honestly say that you have many other projects besides the client project, and if each client takes up so much of your time, then you will not be able to devote time to others, which will lead to problems with clients. Therefore, ask also to set aside a certain time per day for discussing all issues, everything else by mail.