At the heart of every professional relationship is a solid level of trust. Whether it’s with your employees, or clients, trust needs to be built into the foundation of your business, starting with your workflow. Professionals who have confidence in their day to day process are more likely to work effectively and complete standout projects - effectively growing their trustworthy reputation. 

Choosing a professional to design, renovate, or build a home is a big step for your clients. Homeowners want to know they are picking someone they can trust to do a quality job, at a fair price and who will keep them in the loop every step of the way.  What does a trustworthy business relationship look like? Here are three ways to build trust into the fabric of your daily operations and in turn grow your business.

1. Streamline Communication 

In the renovation and design business, there is probably no such thing as over communication with clients. After all, you are working on their home. Making clients feel heard and informed is a key part of building trust whether it is keeping them up to date about the project timeline, purchases, and budget. But navigating these clear lines of communications can be challenging when you are juggling so many projects.

Clients

The Client Dashboard in Houzz Pro brings homeowners into the collaboration process while giving pros the ability to customize it and decide which information to share. Clients can leave comments and messages, pay invoices, and view daily logs. Mobile ready, the dashboard means you can collaborate and communicate with clients from anywhere. Interior designer Kate Roos uses the client dashboard  to inspire trust with customers from the very start. “We send them the client dashboard right away so they can see everything in one place,” she says. “With this tool, our clients know that they’ll have all the information they need and a record of all the little details.”

You and Your Team

This communication ease extends to your team. With Houzz Pro Project Management Software, team members and subs add their own daily logs to a project. An installer, for example, uploads progress shots of a bathroom remodel or a vendor adds notes about a delay caused by a supply chain issue. Want to share the information with a client? The account owner can view, edit and share as much as they choose.

2. Establish a Successful, Repeatable Workflow

Repeated success is a hallmark for building trust and scaling a business. It starts with having a workflow that is standardized, repeatable, and therefore proven.

Clients 

Being able to show potential clients that you have a reliable process of success will make your business standout when they are deciding who to choose for their project. Plus, it saves pros hours of time because they are not starting from scratch every time. Using the templates provided with Houzz Pro Estimate Software helps them estimate twice as fast or faster and bring in more revenue. With a consistent lead screening process to help identify those who fit your ideal client profile, you establish a streamlined process of success you can replicate with each new project. 

You and Your Team

Having a dependable process is important to the success of both you and your team, especially when working across multiple projects. With Houzz Pro you can invite team members to join on your account, while giving them access only to the information that is relevant to their focus. Whether you have a team of twenty or you only work with subcontractors and vendors, Houzz Pro allows you to share necessary information with any of your project partners. 

For construction pro Susan Heinz, this feature is especially important. “Our team needs to see every detail, so I like that we can share what we want to share,” she says. “Houzz Pro makes it so easy for our whole team to stay on the same page throughout an entire project.” In addition to keeping everyone up to date on the details, Houzz Pro also makes it simple to set up internal work processes, such as building a project task list through the task manager tool. This way you can easily assign tasks to team members, who will be notified over email and have clarity on what to expect and what they need to accomplish. 

3. Stay on Schedule 

Scheduling is one of the biggest challenges for pros. Schedules are dynamic, ever-changing and there is no more of a trust buster than surprising clients with delays or no-shows. That’s why it’s important to have a reliable way to make schedule changes in real time and keep everyone in the loop. 

Clients

Keeping clients up to date on project deadlines, milestones, and delays builds the trust that comes with reliability and proactively prevents them from overwhelming you and your team with multiple update requests or negative feedback. Stay on top of scheduling with your clients using the following Houzz Pro tools: 

• Project Timeline Tool: Share with clients via the project dashboard a clear, visual calendar, with project stages, due dates and more. If changes are made during the project, it’s easy to update dates or add new activities. 
• Invoices: Easily send professional invoices, take deposits and let clients use online payments so you get paid on time.
• Stopwatch Tool: Take the guesswork out of tracking your time with the Houzz Pro stopwatch feature. This tool allows you or your team to time yourself as you work on a project and then easily log that time in as a time entry so that you can add it to your invoice later.

“I used to use super expensive timeline tools that are complicated, and that clients don't understand, but now with Houzz Pro it's actually built-in, and clients are able to see it right in the dashboard,” says construction pro Bryan Payne. “I'm able to see it allll right in one spot. It makes it easy to go back and say ‘hey, what did we decide on that?’ And it also saves me so much time - there are fewer calls with me, which is super helpful,” says the Arizona-based owner of Many Mansions LLC. 

You and Your Team

The timeline tool also seamlessly integrates with the task manager, which tracks progress across multiple projects. Team members can see all of their assigned timeline items and tasks in one place, making it easier to work through to-do lists and stay on top of their schedules. For example, working across multiple projects, you can easily access a global view of all your tasks on Houzz Pro and review and update their status at your desk or in the field. You can also quickly assign outstanding tasks to team members to make them aware of any unfinished work. This makes it easier to keep team members  in the know about what is outstanding, so everyone  stays on schedule.

Houzz Pro can bring your professionalism and business to the next level, helping you create a reliable workflow of success that builds trust with the clients and homeowners entrusting their home to you.