Use Details the Client Told You, Not Ones You Found

Imagine a personal stylist named Delphine Marr who has a first meeting with Mrs. Whitcombe on Tuesday. On Monday evening, Delphine looks through Mrs. Whitcombe’s Instagram account, which is public. She finds her at a museum gala in a green gown, and on a dock in Nantucket in August.

Delphine wants to show that she has done her homework. Ten minutes into the meeting, she says, “That green dress at the museum gala was perfect on you. And you’ll want linen for Nantucket.” Mrs. Whitcombe has not mentioned the gala or Nantucket. She laughs, says thank you, and talks less for the rest of the hour.

Mrs. Whitcombe books one afternoon of shopping and not the season. That evening, she tells her sister about the stylist. “She was good,” she says. “She also knew a lot more about me than I’d told her.” When her sister asks for a stylist in the spring, Mrs. Whitcombe gives another name.

Suppose instead that Delphine looks at nothing before Tuesday. In the meeting, Mrs. Whitcombe mentions a board dinner in March. She also says that she hates anything that wrinkles in the car. Delphine writes both down.

Six weeks later, at the first fitting, Delphine hands her a jacket for the board dinner. “This one comes out of the car the way it went in,” she says, and moves on to the trousers. Mrs. Whitcombe books the season. When her sister asks about the stylist, she says, “She listens. I told her one thing about the car, and every jacket since has been right.”

Delphine remembered details both times. What changed was where the details came from, and how they came up. The gala dress came from a page Mrs. Whitcombe had never given her. The wrinkles came from Mrs. Whitcombe herself, and they came back as a jacket, not as “I remember you said.” Here is why the first kind of detail unsettles a client, and how to use the second kind well.

People accept being known from what they shared, and not from what was found

In 2018, Digital Content Next described a set of studies by Tami Kim, Kate Barasz, and Leslie John. The studies were published in the Journal of Consumer Research, and they were about ads aimed at one person. People were asked which ways of learning about them they found acceptable. Two answers stood out. People accepted information gathered on the site they were using, but not from other sites. They also accepted information they had given themselves, but not information the site had guessed.

When people learned that an ad was based on a guess about them, they worried more about their privacy. The ad also worked less well. In a later study, suggestions based on what people had told the site drew more clicks than suggestions based on a guess.

Those were people looking at ads online, and the step to a client is the course’s own. Here is the step. A detail the client told you while you worked for them is like information given on the site itself. A detail from their Instagram or from a neighbor is like information gathered from other sites. A detail you worked out from what you saw in their house is like a guess. The first kind tells the client that you listened. The other two tell the client that you have been looking.

This is why a birthday a client has told you about is safe to mention. The client chose to tell you, so hearing it again is no surprise. The same date found on a public page tells the client that you went looking.

Designers disagree about looking a client up before the first meeting

In 2019, Business of Home asked nine interior designers whether they look up their clients online. Their answers split on when to look and what to do with what they find.

Caroline Rafferty, a designer in West Palm Beach, Florida, does not look before the first meeting. “I like to go into our first meeting with an open mind so I can let them tell me their story and needs,” she said. She does look before she signs an agreement, to check for “a history of multiple lawsuits or any other red flags.”

Monique Spears-Ireland and Chanel R. Gaines run an interior design firm in Lawrenceville, Georgia. They look at a client’s social media before the first meeting, to get to know the client’s personality. They also tell the client so. “We always inform our clients that we have looked at their Instagram or Googled them,” they said, “and we encourage them to do the same with us.”

Measured against this lesson, both methods avoid Delphine’s mistake. Rafferty lets the client give her the details, and her background check stays a check. She does not bring it up. Spears-Ireland and Gaines say at the start where their details came from, so nothing turns up later that the client cannot trace. Of the two, the course suggests Rafferty’s way, because the client hands you everything you use. Where you do look, say so at the start, as Spears-Ireland and Gaines do.

A detail used in passing shows attention, and a list of details shows the file

Even a detail the client told you can unsettle them when it comes up the wrong way. A detail that comes up when the work reaches it feels like attention. Several details recited at once, with no work attached, feel like someone reading from a file.

That is the course’s own advice, and here is the reason. Delphine’s jacket was part of the job Mrs. Whitcombe hired her for. Mrs. Whitcombe saw the result of the listening and not the notes behind it. Suppose that Delphine had opened the fitting with, “How was your daughter’s recital, is your knee better, and how was Lisbon?” Each detail would be one that Mrs. Whitcombe told her. Together, they would show her the page Delphine keeps, and she might start to wonder what else is on it.

So keep a page on each client, out of sight. Let one detail at a time come up where the work needs it. Acting on something before the client asks works the same way. The client sees what you did, and you do not explain how you knew.

Something painful that a client told you needs more care. An illness, a divorce, or a death in the family goes into the work and stays out of what you say. That is the course’s own suggestion, and its reason is that the client chose to tell you once. If you raise it again, you decide for them when they talk about it next. When they bring it up themselves, answer them, and then go back to the work.

Why using what you saw in the house goes wrong

Imagine a dog walker named Ronan Pike who has walked Mrs. Albright’s dog, Juno, for a year. One Tuesday, he sees moving boxes stacked in the hall and a real estate agent’s flyer on the kitchen counter. He wants to keep Juno after the move, so he texts that afternoon. “Saw the boxes. If you’re moving, I’d love to keep walking Juno at the new place.”

Mrs. Albright has not told anyone that the house is for sale, not even her neighbors. She writes back, “Nothing’s decided yet.” That evening, she asks her housekeeper to keep the kitchen door closed on walk days. When the family moves in the spring, she finds a walker near the new house and does not ask Ronan.

Ronan meant well, and he did not snoop. The boxes were in plain sight. His mistake was treating what he saw as something Mrs. Albright had told him. The version that works says nothing about the boxes. When Mrs. Albright tells him about the move herself, he can answer then. “Juno will like the park on that side of town. I can keep her Tuesday and Thursday walks.”

Leaving out what you found is not wasting your preparation

Looking a client up can feel like doing your homework, and leaving what you found unused can feel like a waste. Most of the designers that Business of Home asked do some kind of search.

Your preparation can still do its work. Rafferty’s search protects her before she signs, and the client never hears about it.

How to use what a client has told you

Before a first meeting, decide what you will look up and why. If you check for problems, as Rafferty does before she signs, keep what you find out of the conversation.
On the page you keep for each client, write down only what the client told you or showed you on purpose. Add the date. Leave off what you found online, heard from other people, or noticed in the house.
Let each detail come up when the work reaches it. Do not bring up several at once with no work attached. For example, a florist whose client said her husband sneezes around lilies can leave the lilies out. She says nothing about them unless she is asked.
Leave “I made a note that” and “I remember you said” out of what you say. The detail shows the listening without them.
Put anything painful a client told you into the work, and leave it out of conversation until the client raises it again. For example, a tutor whose student’s parents have separated can send each parent the same report after every session, without comment.
If you want to bring up anything you found about a client, say where it came from in the first meeting. For example, a coach can say, “I read your interview in the business paper before we met. Tell me what it left out.” If you would rather not say so, leave what you found unused.

Next: You will see how to stay in touch between jobs in a way that gives the client something and asks nothing back.