By Cheryl Clendenon
Somewhere along the way, our industry got a little too comfortable labeling clients as “red flags.” Spend five minutes in any designer forum, and you’ll see posts dissecting behavior like it’s a big red stop sign instead of reading behavior as a signal.
They ask too many questions. They want to see options. They hesitate on pricing. They don’t understand the design process. They change
their minds. I want to push back on this, gently but firmly. Because in my experience, most of what we label as red flags are actually a communication disconnect.
The client asks too many questions because nobody explained what happens next or explained what the verbiage in a contract means. They hesitate on pricing because they’ve never hired a designer before and have no frame of reference for what things cost. They changed their minds because they’re spending a significant amount of money on something deeply personal and they’re scared of getting it wrong.
These are not red flags. These are human beings navigating an unfamiliar process. And how we choose to meet them in those moments is what determines whether the experience feels adversarial or extraordinary.
What stellar restaurants figured out first
In his book Unreasonable Hospitality, restaurateur Will Guidara describes transforming Eleven Madison Park into the best restaurant in the world not by changing the food, but by changing how every single interaction with a guest felt. His team obsessed over the moments between the moments. The greeting. The small, thoughtful gestures that made someone feel seen before they ever asked for anything.
The insight is simple: hospitality isn’t about the product. It’s about how people feel while they’re experiencing it. Interior design is one of the most personal services there is. We’re inside people’s homes, making decisions about how they live, function and move through their day. If any industry should be leading the conversation on client experience, it’s ours. And yet, so much of the dialogue is focused on how clients are the problem.
Make no mistake. Boundaries matter. Contracts matter. But so does ownership of the moments that lead up to them.
What if we spent equal energy on the other side of the equation, on making every touchpoint in our client’s journey feel so thoughtful, so intentional, that most of those “problems” never materialize in the first place?
A different way to look at it
Touchpoint Theory (my own terminology) is integral to the way our firm operates. What is it? A touchpoint is every moment a client interacts with you or your brand. The initial inquiry response. The consultation booking. The first meeting. The scope of work proposal. The presentation. The waiting periods during procurement. The install. The follow-up after the project is done.
Most designers think carefully about the big moments, the reveal, the presentation, and the final install styling. But the magic is in the small ones. The in-between moments that clients don’t expect you to care about.
One small example
I’ll share one example from my own practice. When a new client books a paid consultation with us, we send them a gift card to a local coffee shop along with a branded notecard thanking them for the appointment. Fifteen dollars. That’s it. But the message it sends is worth far more than fifteen dollars: we are already thinking about you. Before we’ve even met, you are not just a line item on our calendar. You are someone whose day we wanted to make a little better.
That small gesture changes the energy of the first meeting entirely. Clients show up more relaxed. More open. More willing to engage. And when someone feels welcomed, they tend to trust faster, communicate better, and move through decisions with more confidence. And let’s face it, who is not more likely to have good feelings about you than someone you gave a gift to? That’s only one touchpoint. One. Imagine what becomes possible when you audit every touchpoint in your client’s journey with this same lens.
A different kind of advantage
Here is what I believe with all of my being, not to mention experience. In a market where many designers offer beautiful work, the ones who will build thriving, referral-rich businesses are the ones who make people feel something remarkable along the way. Not just at the reveal. At every stage.
The designers who answer the inquiry within hours instead of days. Who explain their process so clearly that clients never feel lost. Who anticipate the anxious moments and address them before they become friction. Who treat the client’s experience as a design project in itself and something to be crafted with the same care as a kitchen or a living room.
This is not about being a pushover or saying yes to everything. It is about recognizing that most client frustration comes from uncertainty, and most uncertainty comes from a break in communication that we have the power to close. Remember it is not successful communication if one side does not understand!
Stop and reconsider
The next time you’re tempted to call something a red flag, ask yourself a different question: is this a person who needs me to show up differently? Is there a touchpoint I’m missing? Is there a moment in my process where this person felt unseen, and is that what I’m seeing reflected back at me now?
Sometimes the answer is genuine no; sometimes a client is simply not the right fit, and that’s okay. But more often than we’d like to admit, the answer is yes. This is an opportunity in the making. The designers who seize it are the ones clients can’t stop talking about.
Cheryl Clendenon owns In Detail Interiors, a full-service design-based retail showroom in Pensacola, Fla. She is also a business and sales strategist working with interior designers and others in the industry and is a regular contributor to Home Accents Today.
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